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Colossians 3:1 If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2 Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in Glory.

We cannot be risen until we are first buried.

May the Lord add a blessing to the reading of His word.

I’ld like to take as a topic for today “If ye be risen with Christ” and a text “Eulogy of the Flesh”. That is quite a concept. Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. He was born, he lived, he died, he was buried, he even went into hell, and now he is risen from the dead and lives forevermore. Jesus Christ is alive and well today.

He sits today on the mercy seat making intercession for us. He is our advocate. When we make a mistake we bring it before his throne and he makes the intercession for us. When he steps off of that mercy seat to rapture away his bride, there will be no more mercy for he will no longer be our priest, he will be our King. And he will be our judge. And he will sit in the judgment seat and judge every man by his own word.

But today, at least at the writing of this blog, he is on the mercy seat. One day somebody may be reading this, and it will be too late. This morning he is on the mercy seat. This afternoon, he may not be there anymore, but right now at this moment he is still making intercession for us. But I digress for the moment.

So then “if ye be risen with Christ”. Quite a concept it is indeed. How can we be risen? And how can we be risen with Christ? Did you ever ask that question? Did you get an answer?

To start with, in order to be risen, must we not first die? To be risen, is to resurrect, or to come back to life. Then we must have to be dead in order to come back to life. And truly each and every one of us was dead in trespasses and sin.

Galatians 3:22 But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe.

All! Everyone of us was concluded under sin. We were all dead in sin. And anyone who has not been born again is still spiritually dead. Walking, talking, laughing, singing, working, dancing, running and jumping and D-E-A-D dead. It does not matter who you are or who you think you are, if you do not have the Holy Spirit in you then you are absolutely dead. You could be a preacher, a president or a pope and it would not help you; the only true life, the only eternal life, is in Jesus Christ. Hard words but we need to hear them.

But it is not enough to be dead in sin. We need to be dead TO sin.

In order to be brought back to life we must die, to ourselves, to our flesh, and to the sin which dwells in our flesh. It is within our very flesh that sin, unbelief, dwells. Our flesh is lustful. It is evil. Our flesh is so bad that even the Lord God cannot fix it. Our flesh is not redeemed, our souls are. Then we move from our flesh to our theophany. Flesh and blood cannot inherit eternal life. The flesh loves fleshly pleasures that are contrary to the will of God.

Galatians 5:17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

That is not my word but God’s very own holy word. The lusts and desires of our flesh, of my flesh, of your flesh, are totally and completely contrary to the will of God. They work against God. In order to be the children of God we must be overcomers of sin and of this flesh. It is not enough to hold our flesh prisoner, it will escape. That is what we do in the carnal. That is how alcoholics anonymous works. They train themselves to take their flesh prisoner, to control their urges, to quit doing the bad thing. But the desires are still there and one day when you are least expecting it those desires will rear up and overtake you and you are back at square one. You never overcame, and the reason you never overcame is that your sin never died.

If you do not die to your sin then your sin is still alive in you!

Look at cancer. How is it treated? The doctors will cut our most of it from you, but there is still some left, and if more is not done, it will grow and destroy you. We quit smoking, we quit this quit that and think we are fine. We have just cut a few parts of sin away but there is more left just like cancer and just like cancer what is left will grow and destroy you. So the doctor then administers a poison called chemotherapy. The poison is designed to kill the remaining cancer cells. If even one cancer cell is missed by the poison, then it can grow, and with your weakened body from the poison, it will soon devour you. To those who are spiritual, even if every cancerous cell is destroyed, as long as the cancer spirit remains, the cancer can come back. That is how a person can be “cured” of cancer and then die of it ten years later. The spirit that caused it was never cast out. That is the same way a person can quit smoking and then start back up 15 years later. The spirit never left them.

We cut this, and cut that, and get psychology, and seek therapy, and get religious, and come to church, and hang out with new people and cut out a bunch of old habits. But if there is sin left behind, if we do not actually kill the sin then it will grow.

Hebrews 12:15 Looking diligently lest any man fall of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;

Just like cancer, a root of bitterness, an undead sin in us, will spring up when we are least expecting it and defile us. That is why we MUST die to our sin. If we just put off a few things, or quit a few things, then we are not dead yet. We cannot be risen until we are first dead! Let me repeat that so it sinks in. We cannot be risen until we are first dead!

People will ask, “what must I do to get the Holy Spirit?” DIE! Die to your sin so that you can be risen with Christ. Die a death as sure as if you put a gun to your head and blew your brains across the room. But the death is a spiritual one, not physical.

Romans 6: 3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the newness of live. 5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. 6 Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. 7 for he that is dead is freed from sin. 8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.

Do you see it? Did you get all that? Lets look at it more closely:

Romans 6: 3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?

How were you baptized? Were you baptized into a church? That is what the Jehovah witnesses do. Not into Christ but into a church. Most denominations will baptize you into titles of father son and holy ghost. But look what the scripture says, we must be baptized into Christ. Then and only then are we baptized into his death. But there is more.

4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in the newness of live.

Buried in baptism. Not sprinkled with him, but buried with him in baptism. A full immersion in water is required or the Lord does not recognize it. Jesus was placed in a tomb. Then we must walk in the newness of life. A new life. We must live a new life. If we are not living a new life, with new ideas and new desires then we are not yet dead to our sin. That is the problem, we get so excited to baptize people that we are baptizing live people. We are burying live people. You cannot bury someone until they are dead. The Bible says to repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sin. Repent, die unto sin, then be baptized. Without repentance you will simply go in a dry sinner and walk out a wet sinner. A spiritual zombie. We will think we are OK, but according to the Word of God, we are not.

5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. 6 Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

Our old man is crucified with him. The body of sin is destroyed. Is our old man crucified this morning, or just kept under raps until we get out of church and away from other Christians? Are we dead to sin? Are you serving sin in your life? If so then you are not dead to sin yet.

7 for he that is dead is freed from sin.

There it is in one line. “He that is dead is freed from sin.” There is your answer. There is my answer. If we are dead then we are free from sin, therefore if we are not free from sin then we are not yet dead. One leads directly to the other.

8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.

And there is the fulfillment, “if we be dead with Christ we shall also live with him”. So to put it together, if we are dead then we are free from sin and thus we will live with him.

If we are still serving sin, then we are not yet dead, and we will NOT live with him.

Now there is a difference between serving sin and making mistakes. You and I will make mistakes until the very moment of the rapture. Every one of us will fall short. We are in the flesh and thus quite imperfect. The difference is, are you serving sin? Are you pandering to your lusts? We all have lusts. Do we sin wilfully? Anyone who says they are not tempted is a liar. The flesh we live in, that we just heard, wars against the spirit, but do we pander to our lusts, or do we do as the Apostle Paul did?

1 Corinthians 15:31 I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.

“I Die Daily”.

Not once years ago when we became Christians, but each and every day of our lives, we either put our flesh to death, or we pander to it. It is not just to not do things, but to not want to do them. As Christians we become an incredible paradox, the desires of our hearts and the desires of our bodies are completely different. We will look into that in a few minutes.

Who do we obey. Who do you obey? Who were you obeying last night, last Tuesday? Who will you obey tonight? Sin is of the devil. If we have not crucified our flesh and died unto sin, then in serving and obeying sin, we are servants of the devil. Let that sink in. Hear it and understand it. If we are serving sin, then we are servants of the devil.

If we sin wilfully, then we are wilfully serving Satan.

Nobody here wants to serve the devil. If you did, you would not be reading a Christian Blog, and certainly would not have gotten this far in it. But that is how deceiving it is. That is how he sneaks in. When Eve disobeyed God and listened to the serpent, she was serving the devil. She didn’t realize it at the time, but she was doing it. Every time we serve our sin, our lusts, we serve Satan. Remember that. Every time we pander to our lusts, we are serving the one that makes us sick. Every time we obey our lusts we are serving the one who is killing us. Think about it.

Hebrews 9: 14 How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Purge your conscience of dead works.

When we receive Christ he purges our conscience of dead works. Our flesh is still evil. We still have fleshly lusts that war against the soul, but now we have a new desire. Here is the paradox. Our body wants to do one thing, but our minds and hearts have a desire to do the opposite. It does not make sense to the carnal mind and in fact it seems quite mad. Our minds and hearts want to do things that do not please our flesh, things that do not bring us pleasure in the flesh, and not do things that our flesh finds very pleasurable.

And we fight a war daily with our flesh, crucifying it with Christ, so that when he comes, and he will come so very soon, we will be with him and be made like him. Lets continue our original scripture for a moment.

Colossians 3:5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, with is idolatry: 6 For which things sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: 7 In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. 8 But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. 9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; 10 and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him:

That’s pretty straight. You know your lives. I know my life. God knows our lives. We all have our individual weaknesses and the devil will attack you where you are weakest. But “mortify your members”. Kill them! Die unto sin and live!

Without Christ it is all impossible. If it were possible then he died in vain. But it is not possible without him. We have to meet Jesus Christ in person. It is not good enough to sit in church and hear about him. That is good, very good, but not good enough. We need the new birth. And it comes, as the fleshly birth, in three steps. And it has an amazing result on our lives.

Ezekiel 36 25: Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. 26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: an d I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. 27 and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them. 28 and ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God. 29 I will also save you from all your uncleannesses; and I will call for the corn, and will increase it, and lay no famine upon you. 30 And I will multiply the fruit of the tree, and the increase of the field, that ye shall receive no more reproach of famine among the heathen. 31 Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations.

Can you see it coming together? First we get a new heart where we are sorry for our lives and realize that we need salvation, then a new spirit that makes us desire the things of God, his holiness and righteousness, then the Holy Spirit which imparts God’s holiness and righteousness to us. Water, blood and spirit. Justification, sanctification and filling.

And look at the results. First we receive the blessings of the Lord, the salvation of the Lord, Justification. We still have desires. We have guilt. But he removes the guilt. He washes it away. Then the sanctification where he cleanses us from all our uncleanness and iniquities. Then comes the paradox into us. We will loathe our own selves because of our fleshly lusts and the lives we used to live where we catered to those lusts which God calls abominations. God calls our own ways evil. My way is evil. Your way is evil. God’s way is good. Only God’s way is good. And He gives us the Holy Spirit. It is that Holy Spirit that empowers us.

Your flesh will fight against God’s way, which is in his word, and will hate it for God’s way crucifies your flesh in the lusts thereof.

Life is a series of decisions. We are given free choice in this life. We choose our final destination. Each and every one of us decides where we go. If you go to heaven, that was your choice, if you go to hell, that is also your choice. But those choices are wrapped up in the myriad of other choices we make every minute of every day. With every though, every word and every action, we have to decide how we are going to react.

You had to decide whether to come to church or not. You have to decide whether to believe what I am saying or not believe it. You have to decide whether even to listen. You have to decide whether or not you will receive Jesus Christ. You do that party by deciding whether or not you will believe and obey his word.

This is the word of God. If you accept it you are accepting God, and if you reject it you are rejecting God. My words are nothing, but His word is all powerful. What is more important to you, God or the world? Decide. What is more important to you God or your friends? God or your popularity? God or your reputation? God or your career? God or your fashions? God or your pride? God or your church?

Decisions, decisions, and each one leads you on a path. There is a way which seemeth right unto man, the end thereof is death. Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life and few there be that find it. Eve had to decide. Cain had to decide. Even Jesus had to decide whether or not to go to Calvary for you. he had to decide whether or not to accept the devils offers in the wilderness.

You want to be raptured? You are deciding right here and now whether or not you will be raptured. Did you realize that? We will be judge on our lives by this Holy Revealed Word of God. Either we crucify our flesh and live with Christ or do the opposite.

Hebrews 6:4 For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, 5 And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, 6 if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.

When we hear this word of God we either accept it and crucify ourselves, or we reject it and crucify Jesus Christ afresh. I’ll let that sink in real deep. If we receive the word of God then we will crucify our flesh.

If we reject the word of God then we crucify Jesus Christ afresh.

You know Israel was given the word of God, and they rejected it at Kadesh Barnea. And when they rejected it they died. Two million people left Egypt with Moses, they were all Israelites, they all had the prophet and his message, they all ate manna, they all were baptized in the sea with Moses and they all died. All but two. Two out of two million.

There are some 3 billion people who call themselves Christians today. If numbers hold true then only 3000 people will be raptured from the whole planet. 8000 go missing every day in the United States alone, so 3000 from the whole planet would not be missed. The United States makes up 5% of the worlds population so statistically they will only loose 800 people in the rapture. Canada is one tenth the size. Are you going to be one of the 80 people in Canada that are raptured?

How many will be raptured? FEW! That is all we know. Could be 80 from Canada, could be eighty thousand, could be 1.

I’ve mentioned this before. If you run the numbers, there could have been as many as 13,000,000,000 people on earth in Noah’s day. That is twice the population of today. And of all those people only one was raptured.

I am not trying to depress you. I am not trying to make you sorry but to a Godly sorrow, for a Godly sorrow brings repentance, and repentance brings life. Don’t start thinking it is impossible. With the Lord nothing is impossible. It is so easy to receive eternal life. It is the easiest thing in the world to do. It has no price for the price was paid 2,000 years ago at Calvary. You don’t have to work for it. You do not have to buy it for it was already purchased for you by Jesus. Eternal life is absolutely free, and absolutely available to everyone here. Every man, woman and child here this morning can receive Jesus Christ into their hearts. Every single soul here can receive the Holy Spirit right now. Some already have received it. And every single soul that is filled can be refilled right now.

All you have to do to receive eternal life is to accept it. The pillar of fire is right there in the room with you. All you have to do is crucify your flesh. All you have to do is decide that the Word of God is right, and everything contrary is wrong, and leave your old life and follow Christ. Believe and obey the Word of God and you have eternal life! Jesus said he who believes and is baptized shall be saved and he who believes not shall be damned. So believe! Cast off all doubt and believe the word of God.

Only Believe! All things are possible if we only believe.

The Christian world, with all its denominations and organizations has rejected the word of God in favour of dogmas and creeds which are contrary to the Bible. Are we rejecting the Word of God? Look to the Bible, whatever it says is right. Anything that contradicts the Bible is wrong. It is that simple. It does not matter what you were thought, what your Sunday school teacher told you, what your preacher said, what the science journals say, what the TV says, if it is not word upon word, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little there a little exactly according to the Bible it is wrong.

Our flesh is contrary to the Bible. Our flesh is wrong. Our carnal minds are contrary to the Bible. Our carnal minds are wrong. Our carnal minds cannot understand spiritual things. We cannot figure out the Lord God. The word must be revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is the light of the world and it is only through him that we can understand anything spiritual. And the holy spirit will always point us back to the word of God.

People will tell you that God told them to do something, yet what they are doing is contrary to the word. It cannot be God for God cannot contradict himself. Yet they will be very religious in their doings.

2 Timothy 3:1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2 for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent et, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 4 traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; 5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

Very religious, having a form of godliness, but their flesh is not crucified. Look at the works described here and compare it to the fruit of the spirit.

Galatians 5: 19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, 21 envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 23 meekness, temperance: against such there is no law 24 and they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

Can you see the difference? Men are lovers of their own flesh but we are told to crucify our flesh. If we love our flesh then we will fulfill the lusts thereof and crucify the Lord, but if we loved the Lord, then we will crucify our flesh with its lust. If we crucify our flesh and die to sin, then indeed we will raise with him, and are already risen with him and sitting in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

2 Timothy 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned to fables.

This word of God is power. When we hear the word it goes to our roots. If we accept it, the word washes us clean and sets us free, but if we reject it, that same word will condemn us. If we do not crucify our flesh, if we love our own selves, then we will not be able to endure a word that condemns our flesh. If we love the Lord, then we will love how the word circumcises our hearts and ears. We will love how the word of God cuts away our flesh. We will love how receiving the word of God crucifies our flesh with the lusts thereof. If we are not living the word, then we will be condemned by it.

Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than a two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

God knows our every word, and our every move, and our every thought. When you hear his word, it will reveal what is inside you. It is better than any X-ray, better than any CAT scan, better than an ultrasound. God’s word cuts deeper than any of them. It cuts away at your flesh and not just at the surface, but deep into the bones and marrow. God’s word goes so deep that it reveals the thoughts and intents of the heart. Not just your thoughts, but the very motives behind your thoughts. Every desire, every lust, every want, every like and every dislike is open to him. He knows exactly what you are thinking about what I am saying, and why you are thinking it.

Our flesh cannot stand it. If our flesh is alive then it will flee from the presence of God, it will flee from the word. Our flesh hates the word of God. Our flesh is God’s enemy. Our fleshly carnal minds are God’s enemy.

If we crucify that flesh, then we will be able to endure sound doctrine, which is the Word of God, and we will be risen with Christ. And if we are risen with Christ we will seek those things above.

2 Corinthians 5: 14 For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead; 15 And that he died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. 16 wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have know Christ after the flesh yet now henceforth know we him no more. 17 Therefore if any man b e in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. 18 And all thins are of God who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.

We must become A new creation in Christ Jesus.

The new birth is not just a figure of speech, it is not a ceremony, it is a literal birth of a new person, a new human being, a new creature. Old things are passed away. Things you used to love, you now hate, and things you used to hate, you now love. Things that meant everything to you are now garbage. Things you were proud of you are now ashamed of. Things you would have been ashamed of are now your greatest treasures.

Are you changed? Have old friends commented on how they liked the old you better? People wonder what happened to you? People who used to be your friends now want nothing to do with you and avoid you? That is because you are not you anymore. You are now a brand new person. That is the new birth, it takes a twofold child of hell and rebirths them as a child of God.

It is a mystery indeed and the greatest miracle of all. God took Saul of Tarsus, a pompous religious murderer, and turned him into Paul the humble apostle and prophet messenger. God took the shameful creature that I was and made the creature I am now. God took the shameful creature that you were and made the creature you are now.

When you are born again you are the same person, but not the same person. You have the same mind, but with different thoughts in it. You have the same heart but a different spirit in it. Your desires change. Your tastes change. Your motives change. Your treasures change. Your goals change. Your priorities change. Your likes change. Your dislikes change. You become a brand new person. Even my tastes for food changed!

When you are born again, you become the person that God had in His mind when he wrote your name in the Lamb’s Book of Life before the foundation of the world. The predestinated seed will accept the Word of God. The predestinated seed will crucify their flesh. The predestinated seed will receive the holy spirit. The predestinated seed will believe every word in the Bible. Jesus Christ is the Word of God made flesh. The predestinated seed is the Bride of Jesus Christ and just as Adam’s bride was a part of him, so is Christ’s bride a part of the Word of God.

It is up to us to choose, live for our flesh, or live for Christ. Crucify our flesh, or crucify Jesus. All we have to do is accept him, accept his word, believe his word and cry out to him.

Romans 10: 8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; 9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 for with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. 11 for the scripture saith, whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. 12 for there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

You want salvation? Cry out! Confess Jesus Christ with your mouth. Do you believe he is here? Prove it. Talk to him. Cry out to him. If you saw him standing in front of you with your eyes you would all cry out and rush to him. He is there with you right now, closer to you than your own breath. The pillar of fire is right there. Cry out to him and be saved. Do you believe on him? The word says if you believe you will not be ashamed. Fear is a spirit. Resist the devil and he shall flee from you. Praise God!

Praise God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your body. Let every facet of your being cry out to the Lord Jesus Christ this moment, and receive of him. He is knocking at your heart this moment. Receive him and he will come into you and sup with you, and you with him. He will be your God, your saviour, your healer, your deliverer, your redeemer, your friend.

Do it today, do it now, tomorrow may well be too late.

May the peace and grace, power and majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

John 19: 30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

Salvation is a Finished Work of the Lord Jesus

It may seem like an odd scripture with Christmas approaching; more like an Easter message. But for a Christian every day is Christmas and every day is Easter.

The Carnal man will look upon this scripture, and the context of it, and say that Jesus had fulfilled the final prophecies of his life, and said it was done, and died. While this is true, there is a far deeper spiritual meaning to what he said. What exactly was finished?

What did he come to accomplish? There are lots of ways to take this line of thinking. But this is the direction that the Lord put on my heart for today.

Matthew 5: 17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

The first thing we see is that the Lord Jesus came to fulfill the law. Now in every law there are two distinct components. First there is a commandment, a do, or do not part. Second there is a penalty for transgression of the first part. Most people don’t realize this. That is why they do not understand how Jesus could fulfill the law. He did not change the do, do not part. He simply took the penalty for it upon himself. For example:

Exodus 21:12 12 He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.

There are two distinct parts. 1) if you hit someone and they die, and 2) you shall be put to death. Jesus fulfilled this law. Does that mean you are now allowed to hit someone and kill them? NO! It means that Jesus took the penalty upon himself. If you had killed someone, and you repented and were baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, then Jesus Christ took the penalty of death upon himself at the Cross of Calvary. This does not give us license to sin, it justifies us from our sin. Big difference. They are completely different ideas.

Romans 6:What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? 2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:6 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.7 For he that is dead is freed from sin.

Jesus Christ took the penalty of the law upon himself. The commandment is still there. The commandment is still in force. The penalty is still in force as well if we are not under the blood covenant of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ laid down his life and took it back up. We do the same thing in baptism. We lay down our lives with him, crucify our old man, our old nature, with him. The difference is that we do not pick our old lives back up. We pick his life up, or more correctly, his life, the Holy Spirit, picks us up. Then we no longer live, but it is Christ Jesus living in us.

Galatians 5: 18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

If ye be led by the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Therefore the corollary of that is If ye are NOT led by the Spirit, ye ARE under the law. Do you realize what that means? Every single soul that is not under the blood of Jesus Christ, that has not entered into the covenant of the New Testament, is still under the law. The Whole Law!

When they come up in the white throne judgement, they will be judged by the Lord Jesus Christ using the entire letter of the law. They will be held accountable for every single law, every single ordinance in the Old Testament of the Bible.

It is finished! It indeed is. But we still must receive it! If we reject the pardon that was signed by the blood of Jesus Christ, we will be called to answer for every single letter of the Law of Moses.

It is finished! For the children of God, it is finished!

1 Peter 2: 24 Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

When were you healed? You and I were healed 2,000 years ago. It is finished!

But do we act that way? Do we act as though it is finished? We have a promise of the Lord. Every single disease, every single sickness, every single ailment we will ever get has already been healed! It is finished.

2 Chronicles 16: 12 And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great: yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians.13 And Asa slept with his fathers, and died in the one and fortieth year of his reign.

Now Asa was not an unbeliever. He had a long history with the Lord, and with the supernatural power and might of the Lord God Jehovah. He also had a promise of the Lord spoken to him by a prophet:

2 Chronicles 15: And the Spirit of God came upon Azariah the son of Oded: 2 And he went out to meet Asa, and said unto him, Hear ye me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin; TheLordis with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you. 3 Now for a long season Israel hath been without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law. 4 But when they in their trouble did turn unto theLordGod of Israel, and sought him, he was found of them. 5 And in those times there was no peace to him that went out, nor to him that came in, but great vexations were upon all the inhabitants of the countries. 6 And nation was destroyed of nation, and city of city: for God did vex them with all adversity. 7 Be ye strong therefore, and let not your hands be weak: for your work shall be rewarded. 8 And when Asa heard these words, and the prophecy of Oded the prophet, he took courage, and put away the abominable idols out of all the land of Judah and Benjamin, and out of the cities which he had taken from mount Ephraim, and renewed the altar of theLord, that was before the porch of theLord.

King Asa had the Word of the Lord. The prophet was sent and brought him the message of the hour. Do we have a message? Are we going to trust in the Lord, in the message, in the Word of God?

King Asa saw the Lord deliver him from undefendable odds. And the Lord not only defeated his enemies, he was given 35 years of peace. That is supernatural in any era. Yet after all that, after 35 years of supernatural experiences, after hearing the words of a vindicated prophet, when trouble came, he rejected the way of the Lord and sought the arm of flesh. And it cost him his life.

Why? Because with King Asa, it was not finished!

2 Chronicles 15: 16 And also concerning Maachah the mother of Asa the king, he removed her from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove: and Asa cut down her idol, and stamped it, and burnt it at the brook Kidron.17 But the high places were not taken away out of Israel: nevertheless the heart of Asa was perfect all his days.18 And he brought into the house of God the things that his father had dedicated, and that he himself had dedicated, silver, and gold, and vessels.

He did run well. He cut down the idols and burnt them. He cast out the idolaters. He was a message believer! He was justified in his day. He was sanctified in his day. He sanctified all of Israel!

BUT, “the high places were not taken away out of Israel”. His new birth was not complete!

Ezekiel 36: 24 For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land.25 Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.26 A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

The new birth is not a single event. It is several events locked together. It is just like the natural birth. The baby is conceived. We often forget that part in discussing the new birth. The baby is conceived first! How? A seed is planted and the seed grows, and the seed bears fruit. That fruit is the baby.

The first thing that happens in a new birth is the planting of the seed, which is the Word of God. The life in that seed is the Holy Spirit. Jesus said in John 6:63 that “my words are spirit and life”. The first step in the new birth is that someone like you or I, someone who carries the seed, plants it in the heart of the heathen. Big word to use in this politically correct day. We are all heathens once too.

The life in the seed is the Holy Spirit. If we do not have the Holy Spirit, then the seed is dead inside of us. If we do not have the Holy Spirit, then the seed that we plant is a dead seed. That is why we have over 1,000 denominations on earth with 3 Billion people calling themselves Christians, all preaching out of the Bible, and planting DEAD SEED!

2 Corinthians 3: 6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

If we preach the Word of God without the Holy Spirit, we are planting a DEAD SEED, a seed that will rot and kill the host. We will kill people with that dead seed. How can the Word of God bring death?

2 Samuel 6: 3 And they set the ark of God upon a new cart, and brought it out of the house of Abinadab that was in Gibeah: and Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, drave the new cart.4 And they brought it out of the house of Abinadab which was at Gibeah, accompanying the ark of God: and Ahio went before the ark.5 And David and all the house of Israel played before theLordon all manner of instruments made of fir wood, even on harps, and on psalteries, and on timbrels, and on cornets, and on cymbals.6 And when they came to Nachon’s threshingfloor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the ark of God, and took hold of it; for the oxen shook it.7 And the anger of theLordwas kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there for his error; and there he died by the ark of God.

They were carrying the Word of God, the Ark. They had a good intent. They had no evil or malicious intent in their hearts. David, the King that the Bible says was a man after God’s own heart, led the way. They had musicians out in front. They had a program, a religious program that looked perfect. They had everything lined up but one. The wrong people were handling the Word. The Bible says it must be carried on the left shoulders of the Levites, over their hearts.

And when the Word of God went forth without the Spirit of God, then even the righteous man Uzzah died. Without the Spirit of God, the Seed of God, the Holy Bible, is DEAD.

Without the Holy Spirit, the message of the hour will bring DEATH! It is a dead seed without the life of Christ in it. That is why we have so many churches, preaching the Bible, and yet all they can create is still born babies.

So the new birth starts with the planting of the seed, the live, spirit borne seed. Then the seed germinates. A baby germinates for 40 weeks. Forty is one of God’s special numbers. Moses was on the mountain for 40 days. Jesus fasted for 40 days.

The seed of the Word of God will germinate in the heart, watered by the Holy Spirit. Now the Spirit does not indwell at this point, it anoints. There is a different. Remember Jesus said the Spirit would be with us, AND in us. And is a conjunction. Two separate events.

Then we get to the point where we usually start speaking on the New Birth. First we have Justification, then we have Sanctification, then we receive the Spirit.

1 John 5: 4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.5 Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?6 This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.7 For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.8 And there are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.9 If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son.

It is the Spirit that bears witness. Not the letter. The birth is water, blood and spirit. Just like a physical birth, first the water breaks, then the blood, then the baby. So too with the new birth. First the water, the justification in baptism. Then the blood, the sanctification. Then the filling of the Holy Spirit. Three definite steps.

And again the Scripture says here that “the witness of God is greater”. The witness is the Holy Spirit. Our witness without the Holy Spirit, is the witness of men, and it is powerless. It becomes a second had gospel.

Acts 19: 13 Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of theLordJesus, saying, We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth.14 And there were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, and chief of the priests, which did so.15 And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?16 And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

These seven men had heard the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. They had heard the message of the hour from the mouth of the prophet. Not only had they heard the message, they also saw the vindication in signs, wonders and miracles.

But for them it was not finished!

They had the letter, but they did not have the spirit. They came with a second hand gospel. They came quoting the prophet but without the spirit, they simply had the testimony of man. The testimony of God is greater. For the seven men, it was not finished. They had the message, but they did not have the Spirit or the Revelation of the message.

Is it finished for YOU?

We have to make this personal, intensely and completely personal. Do you have the Revelation and the Spirit? Is your new birth complete? Is your faith complete? Only you can answer that.

Are you trusting completely in the Lord today? Asa could not. He had the message. He heard it from the mouth of the prophet. He had 35 years of supernatural experiences with the Lord. Yet it was not finished for him. He did not take away the high places. He did a lot. But he did not do it all.

David, the man after God’s own heart, the anointed King of Israel, did almost everything. He had the musicians. He had all but one thing. He failed to get the Levites to carry the Word. He failed to get the Spirit of God in the picture. He had the letter, but not the word. He was planting a dead seed.

That can happen in our message churches today, and indeed it is happening. It was even happening when Brother Branham was here. He warned of it. He warned of the need for repentance before baptism. He said we are going in dry sinners and coming out wet sinners. He said we were creating still born Christians. It is the same today. Where is the Lord today? We have the message. We have the quotes. We have the music. We have fancy Churches. We have big buildings, great architecture, beautiful interiors, lights and sounds, audio visual systems, professional musicians and singers. We have preachers in $5000 suits.

They are Ox Carts!

The Word of God is not carried in a building, or an organization, or a system, or a program. It is not carried in a denomination. They can only carry the letter, the dead letter.

The Word of the God, the Spirit of God, can only be carried in the hearts of the Christians. The Lord dwells in the hearts of the Bride of Christ, and nowhere else.

Judges 6: 7 And it came to pass, when the children of Israel cried unto theLordbecause of the Midianites,8 That theLordsent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith theLordGod of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage;9 And I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drave them out from before you, and gave you their land;10 And I said unto you, I am theLordyour God; fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but ye have not obeyed my voice.11 And there came an angel of theLord, and sat under an oak which was in Ophrah, that pertained unto Joash the Abiezrite: and his son Gideon threshed wheat by the winepress, to hide it from the Midianites.12 And the angel of theLordappeared unto him, and said unto him, TheLordis with thee, thou mighty man of valour.13 And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if theLordbe with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where be all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not theLordbring us up from Egypt? but now theLordhath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.14 And theLordlooked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee?

There are a few things to look at here to tie things together. First of they were sent the Prophet. The Prophet told them of all the power of the Lord God vindicating his word and his promises to them over the years. He is telling them that for them it should be finished.

Then we find the angel appearing to Gideon. Gideon responded with a very simply question. If God is with us, where is the supernatural vindication of a living God? Can we say the same today? If the Lord God is in our midst, then we have a healer here. If Jesus Christ is here, then there is deliverance. If there is a living God with us, then there will be supernatural signs, wonders and miracles. If for us it is finished, then we will most certainly have the fruit of it in full blossom.

And the third point, the angel did not say to Gideon that the Lord is with Israel, he said the Lord is with you.

The Lord God is with YOU! Go in thy might. Have I not sent thee?

The Lord God is with YOU Saints of God!

The only presence of the Lord God Jehovah, the Holy Spirit, is in the hearts of the children of God. He is nowhere else upon the face of the earth, except in you and I. When the rapture comes, it is the Spirit of God leaving this world, and anyone that is filled with that Spirit goes along for the ride. No Holy Spirit equals NO rapture.

Romans 10: 13For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.14 How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?15 And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!

How shall they preach except they be sent? They will plant dead seeds! We can preach the gospel, we can quote the message and even perfectly imitate the Prophet’s voice, but without the Spirit, without being SENT, we will plant dead seeds. Our words will simply be the testimony of man and rot in the hearts of the people. It will make them sick and they will spiritually die.

Have I not sent you? Are you sent? Have you all been sent?

Mark 16: 15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.19 So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.20 And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.

Go YE into all the world! If you are born again, if you are filled with the Holy Spirit, if for you it is finished, then YOU have been sent. The harvest is ripe, but the labourers are few, and far between.

Is it finished?

Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature. Preaching is not reserved for the preachers. There are five ministries from behind the pulpit, but all people are preachers. Even the women! Whoa that shocked someone. There are five pulpit ministries, Evangelist, Prophet, Teacher, Apostle, Pastor. Notice there is no title of “preacher”. We are ALL preachers. We preach the gospel by living it and by testifying of it.

Acts 18: 24 And a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to Ephesus.25 This man was instructed in the way of the Lord; and being fervent in the spirit, he spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John.26 And he began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.

They expounded to him. We are all supposed to testify. We are all supposed to bring the gospel. We are all supposed to go into all the world and tell every soul we meet of Jesus Christ and what he did for us.

That is not to argue doctrine. NO. We are supposed to introduce people to the Lord Jesus Christ. Tell them what he did for you. Tell them how you got saved. Tell them how you got delivered. Tell them how you got healed. Tell them of the signs, wonders and miracles that you have personally witnessed in your life. Do that. For that is our job as Christians. We are sent to be written epistles read of all men. ALL men. Go into the world by the Spirit of the Lord and let the world read Jesus Christ in you.

Do your neighbors know that you are Christians? Do they know the message of the hour? Have you told them about Jesus Christ? Have you testified to them of the signs, wonders and miracles that the Lord Jesus has worked in your life? Have to testified of salvation, of deliverance, of healing?

How about the people you work with? Does your boss know about Jesus Christ? Your customers? Your vendors? The guy who mops the floors? The receptionist? The forklift driver? You have been sent! Did you think you got that job by accident, or because of your qualifications? The Lord gave you that job, and he gave you that specific job for a specific purpose. You have been sent to them. You are an ambassador of Jesus Christ to them. That is your job.

2 Timothy 4: I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; 2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.

Preach the Word! Not just in season, but out of season. Preach it where and when it is accepted and welcomed. Preach it where it is hated and rejected. Preach! Reprove. Rebuke. Exhort.

Finish it! If you dare.

Luke 9: 23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.24 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.25 For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?26 For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.

If it is truly finished for us then we will not be ashamed of him. We will have no problem testifying to everyone we meet. We will look for an in, an opportunity to, any opportunity to talk to everyone about the Lord Jesus Christ. We will express God’s opinion in every conversation, on every topic. We will be ambassadors for the Lord Jesus Christ, for the Kingdom of Heaven. We will plant the seed of God, the Word, by the Spirit. And we will do it all day, every day, with every soul.

Is it finished?

If we are ashamed of him, then it certainly is not finished; not for us.

The work is complete. The price has been paid. There is nothing that the Lord God can do for you today because he has already done everything. The atonement is paid. He cannot heal you because he healed you 2000 years ago. He cannot save you because he saved you two millennia ago. You have already been delivered. Your name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life before the foundation of the world.

It is finished!

The problem is with us. We need to accept it. That is all we have to do. We need to accept it, to believe it and receive it into ourselves. We need to allow it to be finished. That is what the Lord is waiting for. He is waiting for us to attain perfection; for us to allow ourselves to be made perfect. He is waiting for us.

It is finished!

Let it be finished!

Are you sick? Are you waiting for healing? It is Finished!

Are you suffering from oppression? Do you need deliverance? It is Finished!

Do you have financial issues? Do you have work problems? Do you have family problems? Do you have issues that the world says you cannot overcome? Has the doctor written you off? Asa trusted in the doctors. The woman with the blood issue did the same. Then she heard about Jesus. And when she touched the hem of his garment, it was finished!

Blind Bartemaeus begged for his dinner. But when he heard that Jesus was there, it was finished!

It is Finished!

We have the message! We have the gospel. We have the written Bible. We have the fivefold ministry. We have the gifts. We have the fullness.

But is it finished for us, or are we waiting for more? Is there something missing for us? Do we lack? Is there a need that you have, that you know should be finished, but you cannot realize it in your life? Is there a battle that you cannot overcome? Do you feel overwhelmed?

A Man After God’s Own Heart

The outward expression of God’s inner desire.

The Meaning of Life.

1 Samuel 13: 13 And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly: thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee: for now would the Lord have established thy kingdom upon Israel forever. 14 But now thy kingdom shall not continue: the Lord hath sought him a man after his own heart, and the Lord hath Commanded him to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that which the Lord commanded thee.

May the Lord add his blessing to his word. I hope everyone is hungry because tonight’s message is a little meaty. Lord willing, by this word tonight, we will all take one big step closer to God. With God’s help, I am going to answer a very troubling question that has stumped philosophers for millennia. I am going to tell you the Meaning of Life.

In 1 Samuel 15 we read about Saul and how God told Saul that he was finished because he did not obey the Word of God. He told him that obedience was more than sacrifice. That scripture spoke the end of Saul’s reign but here, a little earlier on, we find that God had told Saul that he was taking the kingdom away from him for much the same reason. We find here that Saul could not obey the word of God. And here we also find that God wants a man that is after his own heart.

Saul was a very religious man. He was an anointed king. He believed in God. He was not by any means an unbeliever. Saul was a believer, he was not, however, an obeyer. Saul’s heart was not according to the Lord’s will. He had his own ideas. He had logic. He had reasoning. And Saul had fear. Let’s take a little background here on this story for those who don’t remember it to clearly.

Samuel had told Saul to wait at Gilgal for him to return and that Samuel would be a good seven days behind. After seven days passed and Samuel had not shown up yet, Saul got scared. He knew his heart was not right with God and testified of it to Samuel. The Philistines were ready to attack and Saul in fear made a burnt offering. That was not his job. He was a king. It was the prophet’s job to bring the burnt offering. As soon as Saul had finished, Samuel appeared on the scene. We just read what transpired between them.

Now Saul went on to win the battle that was ahead against the Philistines but his kingdom was still rent from his hands. Even after Saul failed in the Amelekite war to obey God and had Samuel tell him that he was rejected by the Lord God, his kingdom seemed to stand for quite some time. Two years into Saul’s reign God told him that he was going to strip his kingdom from him, and yet Saul reigned as King for 40 years! But the Lord God said he would take it away and God surely did it. The destruction of the Amelekites was a promise God had made some 500 years earlier and the longsuffering of God allowed the nation to stand for 5 more centuries before he obliterated it. We have some promises for this age too.

So don’t ever be thinking to yourself that you got away with something. Get that out of your mind right away. If you did wrong, make it right. God is not ignoring your iniquity, he is giving you time to repent before he calls on you to answer for it. God is longsuffering concerning judgment but don’t ever confuse his longsuffering and grace with slackness. Every jot and tittle, every idle word is recorded and we will be held accountable.

What does God want in a man or a woman? Did you ever ask yourself that question? What does God really want from you? What does God really expect from me? That is a very important question because without the answer how will we ever know if we are right in the sight of God? How can we know if we are pleasing God without knowing exactly what he wants us to do? Did you ever have a job where your job description was not clearly defined, where you were not sure what your level of authority was, where you did not know all the required tasks or they were ambiguous? A job like that will age you prematurely. You never know if you are doing a good job and eventually you will be told that you are doing a bad job because you are not doing what is required. Tasks are not being completed. How can you complete your tasks if you don’t even know what they are? It is the same with the Lord.

God’s one central requirement from us is that we have the right attitude. Saul had a bad attitude. He was puffed up in his own mind. He thought that his thoughts and ideas had merit. He was religious and logical but did not give over fully to God. God gave him some direct and simple orders and instead of believing and obeying those orders, he allowed himself to interpret the Word of God to fit his fleshly desires. Sound familiar.

Saul was not a man after God’s own heart, he was a man after his own heart.

2 Corinthians 10:12 For we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves: but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise.

This describes Saul’s heart perfectly. He measured himself by himself. He did not obey God’s word exactly as it was spoken because he had his own ideas and he interpreted God’s word to match those ideas. But the Lord wants a man after his own heart. God wants a man who will take God’s word exactly as it is written, believe God’s word exactly as it is written, and obey God’s word exactly as it is written.

Where does the word of God come from?

A word is a thought expressed. Before you or I can speak a word the thought has to be first in your mind. And before the thought can be in your mind, the desire must first be in your heart. The Word of God comes from the thoughts of God. And the thoughts of God come from the desires of God’s heart. Do you see it? Do you believe it? The Word of God is the manifest expression of the deepest desires of God’s own heart! That might be a new one for some people so I’ll let that sink in.

The Word of God, this Holy Bible, is the manifest expression of the very desires and intents of God’s own heart.

The Lord God Jehovah wants a man after his own heart. Is it coming clearer? God wants you and me to be the manifest expression of the desires of his own heart. God wants you and me to be his holy revealed word expressed to the world.

2 Corinthians 3:2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: 3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.

We are to be written epistles. That is in our job description. We are here to demonstrate God’s will to the world. We are here to show God’s motives by living them out in our lives. We are here to physically manifest the Lord God’s inner objectives. We are here to outwardly express the inner desire of God’s own heart.

Our lives are meant to be the expressed physical manifestation of the innermost intents and desires of God’s own heart!

Did that hit a chord in anyone? The purpose for your very existence is to manifest the desires of God’s own heart and express those desires to others! If that don’t get your heart going nothing will.

Saul failed to express God’s desires. He was given God’s Word. He was given God’s thoughts perfectly expressed. Saul was made privy to the very inner desires of God’s heart, but instead of obeying and expressing the inner desire of God’s heart, Saul expressed the desires of his own heart.

God’s inner desires are expressed perfectly in God’s thoughts. God’s thoughts are expressed perfectly in God’s Word. Since God’s Word is the perfect expression of his inner desires, anything besides his word must be contrary to the desires of God’s heart. In order to be a man after God’s own heart, our lives must be the expression and manifestation of the desires of God’s heart. In order to be a man after God’s own heart your life MUST be a perfect representation of God’s word! We’ll let that sink in too. I told you it was meaty. If and only if we live a perfect representation of the Word of God, then we are according to God’s own heart.

If we cannot agree with the written revealed word for the hour, if our doctrine is different than God’s written word, then our thoughts are different than God’s thoughts, and our desires are different than God’s desires. Think about that. If we change one word in this Bible, if we add one word to this Bible, if we take one word away from this Bible, then we are not the expression or manifestation of God’s desires. If we try to alter this word in any way, we become an abomination to the Lord God.

To attempt to change or alter or dismiss a single word out of this Bible will bring damnation upon us.

But it is done all the time. The Catholics believe that the Pope has the right to change the Bible and add or take away at his discretion. The Jehovah’s witnesses believe that the group who writes the watchtower has the right to bring any doctrine of their choosing and add or take away from the Bible at will. The Mormons simply wrote their own book. There is a growing belief spread by the World Council of Churches that any religion is good no matter what their doctrines. Most people today who call themselves Christians do not believe that the Bible is the perfect, unfailing word of God. But what does the Bible say about that?

Galatians 1: 6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: 7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

Accursed! Every single one of them is accursed! You change this word, you disregard this word, you preach contrary to this word and you will be accursed. This is it! This Bible is the sole expression of the inner desires of God’s own heart! There is no other! God wants men and women whose lives are the manifest expression of this written word. The only people who will be raptured off of this planet are those whose lives are the perfect expression and representation of the revealed word of God for the hour! Saul believed the Word of God he just could not obey and live the word of God and God rejected him for it. Live this message and you go home! Believe this message and don’t live it and you stay here for the tribulation!

James 2:18 Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works. 19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble. 20 But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?

Oh my, there it is in black and white. It doesn’t do us any good to believe if we don’t obey. The devil believes. Is that Bible? Do you believe it? We just read it. And not just Satan himself, but the devils, plural, believe and tremble. They believe every word but they cannot obey it. They know it is the Word of God. They know its power. But their hearts reject it.

Saul believed every word of Scripture, but he could not obey it because the desire of his heart was not for the things of God. Saul’s treasures were earthly. Saul’s mind was carnal. The carnal mind is enmity with God. As long was we are not born again our minds will be carnal and our desires will not be the desires of God. Without the new birth we will never be able to express the desires of God in our lives. As Jesus so eloquently put it, except you be born again you will never see the kingdom of heaven.

But the Lord God found a man after his own heart. God found a man who had the desire to obey God’s word. He was a ruddy little fellow out in the back pasture. He had no education. He was not sophisticated. He never went to a Bible school or a seminary. He didn’t even have grade school, let alone a college degree. But this little fellow had a heart to obey God. His name was David.

Now David was not perfect. He made some pretty glaring errors. But his errors were not an intentional disregard for the word of God. David was not sinning willfully. Saul was. Remember when Samuel came to Saul to confront him about the Amelekite problem, Saul defended his actions. David was a different type of man. When David was confronted about his errors, he confessed his faults and threw himself on the mercy of God. David was not a willful sinner. Saul sinned willfully. Saul knew right from wrong and did contrary to God’s word because his own desires were different than God’s desires. Saul had more respect unto his own wishes than to God’s wishes. David was just a man weak in the flesh.

Where do we stand tonight? We all make errors every day. We will fall short every day till we die. But why do we make those errors? Are we simply weak in the flesh being overcome in a fault, or are we willfully disregarding the Word of God in favour of our own desires? Are we after God’s own heart, or are we the children of disobedience?

Hebrews 10:26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, 27 But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. 28 He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: 29 Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?

You hear this word. I hear this revealed word of God for the hour. Saul heard the word. David heard the word. You believe this word. Saul believed the word. Satan believes the word. David believed the word. David was a man after God’s own heart. In David’s heart was a desire to please God and to obey every word of God. In Saul’s heart was a desire to please himself. Where do we stand? What is the desire of your heart? You know. God knows. Are we men and women after God’s own heart? Is our desire to live according to the word of God.

Be a man or woman after God’s own heart!

Do we hear the word and justify our actions, or do we hear the word and repent of our actions? Do we hear the word and disregard it in favor of our teachings and dogmas and traditions, or do we hear the word and disregard our teachings and dogmas and traditions?

There has apparently been a lot of talk of Xmas trees lately. The Bible, in Jeremiah in chapter ten, strictly forbids us to have Xmas trees because they are heathen idols. It says “do not do as the heathens do”. What will you do when hearing that? Will you disregard the word of the Lord and justify your actions in having the tree and decorations? Or will you tear down and throw out that heathen idol with all its trappings and have no more to do with it? What do you think Saul would have done? What do you think David would have done?

What will you do?

You, right here, right now are faced with a decision. You have been given the Word of God. Here it is again so you don’t miss it:

Jeremiah 10: 1Hear ye the word which the Lord speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: 2Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. 3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. 4They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

You might say that you have a tree and God blesses you. God blessed Saul with a great victory against Palestine immediately after telling him that he was rejected. God blessed Israel in the desert for 40 years in blessing you cannot even imagine and the Bible says everyone of them was already dead. There is the Word of the Lord God in black and white forbidding the trees. What will you do?

Suppose you hear in Acts 2: 38 that you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and read in Acts 19 that says even if you were baptized in a different method, that you must be rebaptized for the remission of sins. And what if you also search the scriptures and church histories to find that the only baptism ever performed in the Bible and right up until the Nicene Council of 325 AD was by full immersion in water in the “Name of Jesus Christ”? And what if your church baptizes in titles, or sprinkles instead of immersing? What would Saul have done? What would David have done?

What will you do?

What will you do? You have some decisions to make. There is no turning away from it. We will either accept and obey the Word of the Lord God, or we will reject it. Will you, as the Ethiopian, and as Apollos and his 12 congregation members, run quickly to the water to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ? Or will you sin willfully and disregard what the Bible tells you in favor of the baptism in titles that the Catholic Church commands?

I told you this would be meaty. We are making decisions right now that will determine our destinations. We are actually choosing between Heaven and Hell, right here, right now. Will you obey the Bible or will you obey the Jezebel Religion? What is your life manifesting right now? Are you the expressed manifestation of the Word of God, or the expressed manifestation of dogmas, creeds and traditions? Are you a man after God’s own heart? Are you a David or are you a Saul? Who would you like to be?

God would have established Saul’s Kingdom forever. But Saul rejected God’s will, so God rejected Saul. That is how it works. David replaced him. He made mistakes. He made errors. But David’s heart was to please God and obey his word. Saul justified his actions. David repented of his actions.

You will make mistakes. Will you justify yourself or will you repent? When Jesus died for our sins he died for ALL of our sins; the ones past, the ones present, and the ones future. All we have to do is repent and follow the Word of God. Put it all under the blood. But we have to have a heart to follow the Word of God. We have to have a heart to obey the Word of God. We have to place this Word above all else. We all have an absolute in our lives.

Our absolute must be the revealed Word of God for the hour.

The word of God is the perfect expression of the very inner desires of God’s own heart. I made a promise a few minutes ago. I told you that I was going to tell you the meaning of life. Here it is.

The Meaning of Life:

Our very existence on this planet, our only reason for being here, the very meaning and essence of human life, is to be the physical manifestation and expression of the innermost desire of God’s heart through faithful obedience to God’s Word.

Simple isn’t it?

That is the meaning of life. That is why we are here. That is why the universe was created. That is why there are trees and birds, rocks and fish, elephants and meteors, stars and starfish. Everything is to express the innermost desires of God’s heart.

Revelation 4:10 The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, 11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

There it is in black and white. All things were created for the pleasure, for the desire of God’s heart. Our purpose is to express that inner desire through obedience to God’s word.

If you are living according to the Word of God, if you are living this end time message, if you are a written epistle read of all men, if your life is a testimony of Jesus Christ, then you are a man or woman after God’s own heart.

If not then there is no time like the present. Repent and turn to God. That is all we have to do. Saul made mistakes, David made mistakes, but David repented and turned back to God. Repent! Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Put everything under the blood. Consecrate your life to him. Obey his word and you shall live. David repented. Repent like David did and be a man after God’s own heart like David was.

Matthew 17: 1 And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, 2 And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. 3 And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him. 4 Then answered Peter, and said unto Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. 5 While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.

Hear He Him! Listen with your heart in faith.

HEAR YE HIM!

What are we hearing? What are we really hearing? Is it my voice? Is it my words? Was it Matthew’s words? Or was it God’s word? Who are we hearing? Who are we listening to, the messenger, or the one who sent him?

We were given five senses with which to contact the physical world. The flesh profits little, but the spirit gives life. There has been quite a lot of preaching along this line lately, it is for a reason. We have five senses. We see, we feel, we taste, we smell and we hear. We hear with our ears. We hear words with our ears.

But we are also told that we cannot access the Lord God with our five senses. So if we cannot access the Spirit of God with our hearing, how then do we HEAR the word of God? How do we Hear Him? It also begs the question of how do we know what we are hearing? How do we know who we are hearing?

Amos 8: 11 Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:

The world is covered by churches. There are mega-churches in the US that have tens of thousands of people attending. There are officially 2.2 Billion Christians on earth! That is a full one in three people. Canada boasts 22 Million Christians. If that is correct two out of every three people in Canada is a Christian. The United States claims to have 247 Million Christians. A full 73% of Americans call themselves Christian. The VOG says there are 2 Million Message Believers worldwide.

Well then either the stats are wrong, or the Bible is wrong. The Bible says there would be a famine of hearing the word. Not a slow down, not a little bump, but a FAMINE. A global starvation! The souls of the people are starving to death. The world would no longer HEAR YE HIM. If one third of the world were Christians the world would be a very different place in deed. If two thirds of Canadians and 73% of Americans were Christians we would not have police, fire, ambulances or hospitals. We also would not have any prisons. And we sure wouldn’t have any politics!

So what is happening? What is happening in the world? What is happening in the churches? What is happening in the message? And why is it happening? Why is there a global famine for the Word of God? Why do the churches refuse to HEAR YE HIM?

This did not just happen overnight.

2 Thessalonians 2: 3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. 5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? 6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. 8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,

In Paul’s day it was already working. This started back in the First Church Age. It actually started in Eden and we shall look at that shortly. The “Mystery of Iniquity” was already working in the Ephesus Church Age. And the mystery will continue to work until the end of the world. But we know the mystery for the Lord had revealed it to us through his prophet. Amen! We are not in darkness because we have not failed to HEAR YE HIM.

The famine did not come overnight. But it came in our age. And in came in spite of the things that should have prevented it. This is the promise for us. This is what the Lord had done for us in our day.

Joel 2: 23 Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. 24 And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. 25 And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. 26 And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed. 27 And ye shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the Lord your God, and none else: and my people shall never be ashamed. 28 And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: 29 And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. 30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. 31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord come.

We have both the former rain and the latter rain. What the devil hath devoured the Lord has restored in fullness. Every single word in the Bible is revealed in our day. There are no more secrets. There are no more mysteries. We have everything today. But we are in a starving land. How could this be?

Revelation 10: 7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

The mysteries are all revealed! Hear Ye Him! So then how can there be a famine in the land when the Lord has restored all that was lost, revealed every mystery and given us the former and the latter rains? Because we are still refusing to Hear Ye Him. There is food everywhere. The Bible is the most printed book in all history. The entire Bible is revealed in our day. We have over 1,100 of the prophet’s messages online. There are a million ways to access the word online in moments. Yet we are starving to death in the greatest spiritual famine the world has ever seen.

We have doctrines. We have dogmas. We have stories. We have traditions. We are too busy listening with our ears, and talking with our mouths. We are not listening with our hearts. We are not listening by Faith. Do you think if the two thirds of Canada that is officially Christian were hearing the Word of God that the country would be in the state that it is in? Do you think there would be homosexual marriage? Do you think that one in four babies conceived would be aborted? Do you think that 50% of marriages would fail in the first six months? Is that the fruit of a Christian Country?

But again, this is not new.

Genesis 3: 1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. 6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

The very first sin was failing to Hear Ye Him. They had the word. They had Logos. They had the message of the hour. They had the prophet still with them. Both Eve and the serpent were even quoting him. They had the doctrines perfect. They were quoting the Word of God and their prophet’s message perfectly.

Now let’s take a moment here to look at another facet. How do we know that they failed to Hear Ye Him? We can say when they committed adultery. But that happened after. Remember what we discovered about sin. Sin is unbelief. And because we disbelieve we commit those acts. So we actually sin prior to committing the act.

This one is so subtle that most will miss it completely. Notice in Genesis that the Lord Jehovah is called “God” right up until Genesis 2. At this point he is suddenly referred to as the “Lord God”. The title Lord signifies a relationship. If he is Lord, then he must be Lord over somebody. And he is continued to be called Lord God. Genesis 2 is where the seventh day began and the description of Adam comes in.

Genesis 2: 7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Man was created in the likeness and image of God. Then the Lord God created a flesh body and man “became” a living soul. He was not created that way. He was created a spirit. And in Genesis 2:7 he “became”, Hebrew word “haya” which means to change state. Spirit Adam Haya, became, changed into flesh man. God was Lord and Adam was servant.

Now we see another change happening.

Genesis 3: 1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

The serpent did not refer to him as the “Lord God” but simply as “God”. The serpent did not have a relationship with him. God was not his Lord. The serpent was outside of any covenant with the Lord God and simply knew him as God. Today if we are not born again of the Spirit of God, we too have no relationship with him.

1 Corinthians 12: 3 Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.

Many people get this confused. That is why 73% of Americans think they are Christians. They think that if you can call Jesus the “Lord” then you have the Holy Spirit. No brothers and sisters. The word here is telling us that he is not OUR Lord, we have no relationship with him, unless we have the Holy Spirit. Quite a difference. Someone is not quite sure so let me reassure you with this scripture.

Romans 8: 9 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.

Without the baptism of the Holy Spirit we do not belong to Christ. Without the new birth we are not Christians! Without the new birth he is NOT our Lord, he is simply God. Without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we have no representation in Heaven. And here is where Eve actually sinned. Here is where she stepped out of the relationship with God.

Genesis 3: 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

She was no longer referring to him as the “Lord God” but simply as God. She stepped out of the relationship with the Lord God, and now he was simply God to her, as he was to the serpent. But surely that is enough? Is it?

James 2: 19 Thou believest that there is one God; thou doest well: the devils also believe, and tremble.

The devils believe that there is one God. But they don’t believe in one Lord God.

Eve sinned when she refused to Hear Ye Him. She was still quoting the prophet! She quoted the prophet perfectly. She had the doctrine all lined up without one miss. She probably even spoke it with a Kentucky accent. But she had left the relationship. God was no longer her Lord. She had rejected to Hear Ye Him.

Now let us look at another example of how this happens in a church.

2 Kings 17: 9 And the children of Israel did secretly those things that were not right against the Lord their God, and they built them high places in all their cities, from the tower of the watchmen to the fenced city. 10 And they set them up images and groves in every high hill, and under every green tree: 11 And there they burnt incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them; and wrought wicked things to provoke the Lord to anger: 12 For they served idols, whereof the Lord had said unto them, Ye shall not do this thing. 13 Yet the Lord testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets, and by all the seers, saying, Turn ye from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by my servants the prophets. 14 Notwithstanding they would not hear, but hardened their necks, like to the neck of their fathers, that did not believe in the Lord their God. 15 And they rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified against them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and went after the heathen that were round about them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them, that they should not do like them. 16 And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal.

They had the Revealed Word of God for the Hour. They had the prophet. They had the scriptures. They had the statutes. Yet they refused to Hear Ye Him. Verse 14 tells us plainly that “they would not hear”. But then it gets insane. They have rejected to hear the Word of God, rejected his ways, yet they have not rejected his name.

2 Kings 17: 32 So they feared theLord, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.33 They feared theLord, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence.

Now on face value this looks positively insane. They rejected the Word of God, they rejected the Prophet’s message, and yet they “feared the Lord”. But that is no different than today. Those 22 million people in Canada who call themselves Christians have done exactly the same thing. It was in Eden, it was in Israel, it is in Newfoundland. It is in the denominations. It is even in the message! We are refusing to Hear Ye Him.

And it is subtle, so subtle that they do not even realize that they are doing it. That is why they stay religious. That is how they stay religious.

1 Samuel 8: 4 Then all the elders of Israel gathered themselves together, and came to Samuel unto Ramah, 5 And said unto him, Behold, thou art old, and thy sons walk not in thy ways: now make us a king to judge us like all the nations. 6 But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the Lord. 7 And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.

Here we get a little deeper. Samuel was the prophet. He was the man that the Lord God chose to send his word to; the word of the Lord comes to the prophet. He was God’s mouthpiece. He was the messenger. Anything the Lord wanted to say to the people, he said through Samuel. And they rejected him, or so they thought. And Samuel had the same misconception. Have you ever been rejected for the message? I have. Samuel was. But it was not Samuel that was rejected, nor were you rejected, nor was I. They were not rejecting the messenger, they were rejecting the one who sent them. They were not refusing to hear the prophet, or you, or I, they were rejecting the Lord. They were not refusing to hear the man for they were asking the man to give them a King. They were refusing to Hear Ye Him. They were rejecting God to be their Lord.

And what about our day?

Acts 13: 41 Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.

A man declared it. In our day William Branham was that man. A few years ago it was John Wesley. Before him Martin Luther and so on. The voice of the seventh angel has declared it in over 1,100 tapes. The Lord God, not just God, but the LORD God has sent the world a Vindicated Word Prophet and they have rejected both Him and the prophet he sent. And yet they are all religious. They will spend thousands of dollars every year on their religious ceremonies all in the name of the Lord that they rejected. Look how much they spend on Christmas trees and decorations each and every year.

Jeremiah 10: 1Hear ye the word which the Lord speaketh unto you, O house of Israel: 2 Thus saith the Lord, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. 3 For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. 4 They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.

And they will spend a fortune each and every year chopping down trees and setting up heathen idols right in the churches. It is an abomination unto the Lord! The Bible forbids even to have a tree near the sanctuary, and they stick a dead one right by the altar. And then call themselves Christians, act religious, pray and worship, and look down on the born again believers as being old fashioned prudes.

2 Timothy 3: 1This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; 5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. 6 For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, 7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Having a form of godliness, ever learning, and never coming to the knowledge of the truth. They will get post doctorate degrees in theology, and believe trinity. They listen to professors, they listen to theologians, they listen to the pope, yet they fail to Hear Ye Him.

Proverbs 16: 25 There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

And it is slipping into the Message Ranks! We are refusing to Hear Ye Him! Look what Jude says. Notice the words. We tend to think he is talking about those on the outside, but look what he actually says.

Jude: 10 But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.11 Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core. 12 These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withers, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; 13 Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.

They are “feasting with us”. They are with us! The feast of charity is the Lord’s supper.

1 Corinthians 11: 27 Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

The feast without fear while eating damnation unto themselves. There are three kinds of believers. First there is the true believer filled with the Holy Spirit. Then there is the unbeliever who will simply dismiss the message in favour of dogmas and creeds. Then there is the make-believer, the Judas, that is who is described here. Feasting with you without fear eating and drinking their own damnation. They don’t have a relationship with the Lord; to them he is simply God and they could care less. They are like their father the serpent.

We tend to think we got it all figured out sometimes. We think that the “message people” are all OK. We are not OK. The prophet warned us that the tare will be with the wheat until the rapture. Jesus told the angels to not rip us the tares because the wheat is beside them. We in the message are now guilty of refusing to Hear Ye Him. We are forming clichés. That is nothing new either. Paul warned of it in his day.

1 Corinthians 1: 12 Now this I say, that every one of you saith, I am of Paul; and I of Apollos; and I of Cephas; and I of Christ. 13 Is Christ divided? was Paul crucified for you? or were ye baptized in the name of Paul?

One is of Billy Paul, one is of Perry Green, one is of Joseph Branham, the next is of Ed Byskal. Carnal! Why would we say that of ourselves? We are not hearing HIM. We are not hearing the author of the message. We might be quoting it word for word as Eve did. We are worshipping the creation more than the creator. We are stepping out of the relationship. We are still worshiping God, but we are not worshiping the Lord God. Hear Ye Him!

It is easy to love a person who is charismatic. It is even easier if they are truly fine people, Holy Spirit filled Christians. It is easy to love a man who preaches the gospel by the Spirit, especially when they have a warm, friendly personality, when they are open and inviting. But the danger comes when we allow our Philio love to overshadow our Agape love. We will love the man more than the Lord who sent them. We will listen to the man’s words and not the Word of God, even though they may be the exact same words. We stop listening with our hearts through faith, and begin to listen with our ears through emotion. Then the devil has room to move in and cause trouble. We step out of the relationship with our Lord, and make men our lords. It is painfully easy to do. That is what was happening in Corinth. That is happening in the message ranks today.

Acts 19: 13 Then certain of the vagabond Jews, exorcists, took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth. 14 And there were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew, and chief of the priests, which did so. 15 And the evil spirit answered and said, Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye? 16 And the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, and overcame them, and prevailed against them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.

What were they preaching? The Message of the Hour! They were quoting the Prophet! But they had no revelation. They knew the word, they knew the doctrine, they knew the message. They quoted it without reservation. They even believed that they had power. They deceived themselves. They thought they were something. They went and challenged the devil in the name of Jesus, not the name of the Lord Jesus. They did not have a relationship with Jesus Christ. They only had a doctrine and a tradition. They did not know the author. They had no revelation of what they were preaching, all they had were quotes. Had they received a revelation, they would not have needed to quote Paul. Do you see Timothy quoting Paul? Or Barnabas? Or Peter? They quote the Word. They had a revelation and a relationship. They had representation in Heaven.

Matthew 15: 8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.9 But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. They don’t have a relationship. Their relationship is with men, not the Lord God. One is of Paul, one is of Silas. One is of Joseph Branham, one is of Billy Paul. They are like the seven sons of Sceva. One preached Jesus whom Paul preached. Today they are preaching Jesus whom Branham preached.

It is a second hand gospel. It is powerless! Hear Ye Him.

We cannot come to the Lord God through Paul, or Brother Branham, or any other man.

John 14: 6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

Jesus Christ is the one and only path to the Lord God. Hear ye Him! But it is only for the elect. Only the elect will Hear Ye Him, because only the predestinated elect seed of the Lord God can Hear Ye Him. In fact we cannot even know who the Lord God is without revelation. That is why trinity has taken over in the world. The people have no relationship with the Lord God. They know there is a God, but don’t even know who he is. In fact they cannot, for it is not for them to know.

Luke 10: 22 All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.

The very knowledge of who and what the Lord God is remains a complete mystery to every soul whose names are not written in the book of life. Think about that. You wonder why it is so hard to testify, to get the simplest ideas to people? They can’t understand the simplest of the ideas. If we cannot know or understand who and what the Lord God is, how can we ever understand any of his attributes? If you have the revelation of the godhead, that in itself is a gift of grace from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Mark 4: 11 And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: 12 That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.

What does it mean to Hear Ye Him? It means to hear with our hearts. It means to receive the revelation of the Word through the Holy Spirit. No man knows the things of the Lord save he to whom it is revealed. Without revelation we hear with our ears, and see with our eyes. We will be able spit out quotes like a machine gun. But we will not have the spiritual understanding of what we are hearing, seeing or even saying.

John 8: 43 Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. 45 And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.

They cannot understand his speech because they cannot hear his word. That is why the message is so confusing, why that bunch did their “disbelieve the sign.com”. They had no revelation. The Lord God sent a man with a seventh grade education, and they with their doctorate degrees cannot understand his speech. They cannot Hear Ye Him. Do we hear him, or just quote him? Do you understand his speech? That is revelation.

John 10: 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:28 And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

We shall never perish! We shall never be plucked from his hand! What a promise. What a reassurance. How can we ever be sad again? No matter what comes your way, you will NEVER perish. You are eternal! You cannot die! All we have to do is Hear Ye Him!

Hebrews 3: 6 But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.7 Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, Today if ye will hear his voice, 8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: 9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. 10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do always err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. 11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.) 12 Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. 13 But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end; 15 While it is said, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation. 16 For some, when they had heard, did provoke: howbeit not all that came out of Egypt by Moses. 17 But with whom was he grieved forty years? was it not with them that had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest, but to them that believed not? 19 So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

Today, right now, hear ye him. Not tomorrow. Not next Sunday. Not the next camp meeting. They may never come. TODAY! Right here, right now. Today if you will hear his voice. Today. It is not the message of yesterday, or last week, or 1952, it is the message of the hour. This hour. Right now. The prophecy says “in the days of the voice of the seventh angel”. Not the days of the man, the VOICE. Today if you will hear his voice. Hear ye him.

Stick with the Word of God. Stick with the Message of the Hour. If you can’t reconcile something with the Bible, if you can’t find “Thus Saith the Lord” on a tape, put it aside.

Matthew 16: 6 Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. 7 And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no bread. 8 Which when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? 9 Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? 10 Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? 11 How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? 12 Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

It is a very dangerous thing. Remember the devil will come so close to the truth that it will deceive the very elect if it were possible. A Catholic priest can’t do that. Even a Pentecostal or Evangelical cannot do that. To deceive the elect, you need to come with the message. And it does not take much.

Galatians 5: 9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

Sometimes it is not something new, but something old. We have all come from somewhere. We all packed baggage. Abraham packed baggage. He brought his father, and he brought Lot. The Lord had to take that baggage from him. Sometimes people come out of denominations, out of cultures, and bring something along and don’t even know it.

Luke 5: 36 And he spake also a parable unto them; No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. 37 And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. 38 But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved. 39 No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.

Sometimes we come out from something, and we are so used to aspects of it, that it seems better to us. It could be a doctrine, a dogma, a tradition. For example the Presbyterians call their preachers by title. Pastor such and such. Seems harmless?

Matthew 23: 7 And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. 8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. 9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. 10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. 11 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

Hear Ye him! It seems such a small thing. A little religious title. Lifting a man up with a title, lifting a man above his brethren. But a little leaven will leaven the whole lump. Have nothing to do with it. Taste not, touch not, handle not. Hear Ye Him! Don’t hear me. Hear Him!

Revelation 3: 14 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; 15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. 16 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth. 17 Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and know not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: 18 I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou may be rich; and white raiment, that thou may be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou may see. 19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. 20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. 21 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. 22 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says unto the churches.

Who is the Angel to the Church of Laodicea? The Prophet. Who then is the Church? We are! This letter is not to the denominations, not to the secular world, but directly to us. We have become lukewarm as a church. The Lord is now standing outside! That is why we cannot organize. As soon as we do, he is outside. But what was the final word to us? “22 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”

Hear Ye Him!

Get into that one on one relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Make him your Lord as well as your God.

As Christians we are all zealous to spread the word of God. We want to share this wonderful gift with the whole world. We want everyone to benefit as we have. We want them to experience healing, deliverance, salvation. We want the Lord to work in their lives in signs, wonders and miracles as he does in ours. And we want the devil destroyed, and his works destroyed along with him.

The new birth is like the physical birth. Water, blood and spirit in proper order. When a physical baby is born, first the water breaks, then comes the blood, then the life of the baby. It is the same with the new birth, the spiritual birth. We become Christians only through the new birth. We cannot join Christianity, we must be born into it. For verily the Lord Jesus told us that except we be born again we shall in no wise see the kingdom of God.

First comes the water, the justification. As Ezekiel words it, our heart of stone is removed and we are given a heart of flesh. We are sinners, lost, strangers and foreigners, alienated from the kingdom of the Lord God. We are blind and in total darkness. Then the Lord Jesus justifies us. The Holy Spirit speaks to our heart through the revealed word of God. He is the one who reveals it to us. Someone brings us the word and the Holy Spirit makes it real, opens our eyes to the light, and witnesses to our heats that it is the absolute, unerring truth. We are convicted. We repent and get baptized in full immersion in water in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of our sins as we are commanded in Acts 2:38. We are now cleansed of our sin. Cleansed of ALL sin. In the eyes of God we are perfected. When he looks upon us he sees only the blood of Jesus Christ covering us. We are now guiltles for we have entered into the blood covenant of Jesus Christ.

But that is not enough. It is a start, and a good one, but we need to push out into the deep. We now need the blood applied to our life. We need to apply the blood to every aspect of our beings. The blood sanctifies us, delivers us from all evil, all iniquity, all sinfullness. It frees us and separates us from the world. It overcomes our flesh. Our flesh will remain sinfull until the rapture, but now our hearts hate the sin that we used to revel in. Sanctification makes us pure. Sanctification sets us apart for service.

Then Acts 2:39 can be fulfilled. We are filled with the Holy Spirit in the baptism of fire. Now the very God of heaven dwells inside of us. Our life is over and we live, not by our life, but by his life. We are branches grafted into the vine of Jesus Christ; his life sustains us and we bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Are we done? NO! We have only begun. We are born again, babies. Now we must grow to the adoption where the Lord God places us as sons and daughters.

When dealing with people we need to look at where they are on this path. Are they even on this path yet? We need to tailor our message to them personally. We need to be in tune with the Holy Spirit so that He can tell us what to say and when.

To the sinner we speak of sin and righteousness and the salvatin of Jesus Christ. It is very black and white and we are duty bound to keep it as straight as possible. Greyness is of the devil. It is either good, or bad. There is nothing in between. Can a river give good water and bitter water at the same time?

To the justified we speak of the deliverance and overcoming power of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We share our testimonies. We pray with them. We teach them. To the Holy we speak of the deeper spiritual things. To the Holy, the new born seed, we uncover the message of the hour. To the holy we speak of deep truths.

Genesis 1:11And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

May the Lord add his blessing to the reading of the word.

A little text this morning if it would be alright with everyone is “every seed after its kind, and every fruit bearing the original seed”. We will see, by the grace of God this morning how everything comes full circle.

When God created the universe he invoked a number of laws by which the natural universe would run. Some of these are spoken of in the Bible while others aren’t. These laws are definite, unbreakable laws. Most of us have heard of some of the basic natural laws: the law of gravity, we have the four laws of thermodynamics, we have Einstein’s law of relativity E=mc2 etc. These laws were ordained of God to run the machine of the Universe. Another one of the natural laws is the law of biological reproduction, which, as we just read, states that every seed comes after his kind. Cows produce cows and ducks produce ducks etc.

How many reading here know that everything natural is a type or metaphor for something spiritual? So we see that God ordained natural laws and spiritual laws. As the natural laws are unbreakable in the natural universe, so too are the spiritual laws unbreakable in any universe. You might say of course the spiritual law can be broken because to break the law is sin. But the law is more than a commandment, the law is a commandment PLUS a punishment. Two separate components, a commandment and a punishment. That is how Jesus fulfilled the law. He said he did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it and he fulfilled it by taking the punishment part upon himself, the commandment part is still upon us. The law remained, only now it is fulfilled.

For instance God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (commandment part) for the day you eat thereof you shall surely die (punishment part). Adam and Eve did not break the law, they transgressed it. The law remained intact for they surely did die, and they did surely die within one spiritual day; a day in heaven being as one thousand years. And not only them but there has not been one single human being in history to live for an entire day of 1000 years. The law of God, while transgressed, remains intact and unbroken to this day.

In our scripture we read how God created a set of laws of reproduction. We see that for each plant, for each herb, for each animal etc we have the law of reproduction stating that every seed is brought after his kind. As a side note notice that it says his kind not its kind signifying that the life in the seed comes from the male, or more exactly its father. We’ll see that show up later. Every seed is after its kind and every fruit bearing the original seed.

We take an apple seed this morning and plant it in some good earth. After a few days it springs up with a sprout that looks nothing like the original seed but the life from that seed is in the sprout and the sprout carries that life. Then after a while a leaf appears, then a bud springs forth, then in a few years it bears fruit. Even the fruit can look nothing like the original seed that we planted but if we look inside of the fruit we will see a seed that looks exactly like the seed you first planted years ago. The life in the new seed is the exact same life that was in the seed we originally planted.

The law of reproduction holds true. We will see that there is a spiritual side to that law that holds equally true. The spiritual law is as perfect and unfailing as the natural law.

Now the world talks of evolution. Evolution states that every seed is after a different kind. Evolution tells us that if we plant an apple seed, we will get an orange tree. Evolution tells us that every seed comes as a mutation, or a perversion of the original seed. Who is the perverter? Satan! The Devil. Evolution is not a theory, it is a lie that deifies Satan and makes him, the perverter, into the creator and father of all life on the planet. Did you realize that? Evolution is a lie, period. Evolution is from the bottomless pit. We will also come to see today how the devil uses the same lie of evolution on a spiritual level.

Matthew 7: 16You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17 Even so every good tree brings forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. 18A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19Every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Here we see Jesus himself showing us the law of reproduction from Genesis as a spiritual law. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit. An apple tree cannot give you a pomegranate, an orange tree cannot give you a watermelon, thorns don’t give grapes and thistles cannot give figs. Why? Because the life in the tree comes from the life in the seed that was originally planted, and the life in the fruit comes from the life in the tree. Do you see it? When you plant an apple seed, you plant an apple LIFE that will grow into an apple tree, with apple leaves and apples bark and bear apples with the same seed and life you first planted. The life of the apples seed is in every cell and fiber of the apple tree. The bark of the apple tree has life from the apples seed. The leaf on the apple tree has life from the seed. If you have a growing seed in your heart the life from that seed will permeate every cell of your body, every thought of your mind, every desire of your heart.

If a corrupt seed is planted a corrupt tree must grow and a corrupt fruit must be produced. If a good seed is planted then a good tree must grow and a good fruit must be produced. If the Revealed Word of God for the hour is planted into your heart then a Godly life will grow and a Godly fruit will be produced in your life. If a perverted Word is planted in your heart then a perverted life will grow and a perverted fruit will be produced in your life. Don’t miss this part. The fruit carries the original seed. You will never cut open an apple and find an orange seed growing in there. Am I making sense to everyone? We just had a baby a couple of months ago. People ask “what did we have?”. There are only two answers they are expecting: boy or girl, not dog or cat.

This is vital so let me go over it slowly. Every seed carries life in it. If there is no life then the seed cannot grow. The life that is in the seed is special and unique to that particular seed. Remember every seed after his kind. The seed that is planted has a certain, particular, unique life in it. That life is then carried by the tree and deposited into the fruit where the original seed with that same original life is reproduced to be replanted elsewhere. So I plant one apple seed and a few years later I harvest a hundred apples, each of which has ten seeds. So I start by planting one seed and ten years later I have not only the fruit of that seed but I have that selfsame original seed with the same original, particular unique life reproduced exactly 1000 times over.

If I plant a denominational seed into your heart today, and it takes root, then a denominational life will grow, and a denominational fruit will be produced, and a denominational seed will be reproduced through you exactly like the one I planted. If I plant a Baptist seed into your hearts this morning and it takes root then your life will be a Baptist life, with Baptist fruit reproducing Baptist seed. If I plant a Catholic seed this morning, you will have a Catholic life with Catholic fruit and Catholic seed. But if I plant a Word Seed this morning, the life of the Lord God, the Holy Spirit, in that Word of God will produce a Godly life, a Godly fruit and a Godly seed in you.

It is impossible for me to plant a Baptist seed and have you to produce a Catholic life. It is equally impossible for me to plant a denominational seed of any kind and have you produce a godly life, a godly fruit, or a godly seed. The denominational churches say they are trying to produce Christians but they are not planting the right seed. How can I be an apple farmer if all I plant are broccoli seeds? If I plant broccoli seeds I will harvest broccoli. I would look pretty silly showing up at the fruit packers with a hundred bins of broccoli and telling them I got Spartans. How can a church produce born again spirit filled Christians when it is not planting the right born again spirit filled Christian seed? A denominational seed can only produce a denominational person. A Muslim seed can only produce a Muslim person. A Buddhist seed can only produce a Buddhist. If you want to produce a Christian then you have to plant Christian seed. The only Christian seed is the Word of God!

Matthew 13:24 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: 25 But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. 26 But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. 27 So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? 28 He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? 29 But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

We have many seeds planted today in the world. We have many seeds planted today in the message. God is planting his seed but the devil is also planting tare seeds. A tare seed can only produce a tare. A wheat seed can only produce wheat. Be careful of what seed you are planting in your heart and in the heart of others. Be very, very careful. Do you know what seed is in you? Do you know what is growing inside you? Do you know what life you are carrying inside you right now? That life that is planted in your heart and is growing is bearing fruit that is reproducing the original seed that was planted. The seed is growing and yielding forth fruit and seed right under your nose. Your life reveals it. What do you think is happening to that reproduced seed?

This is so vital. Is everyone up to speed with what I am trying to bring? Is this making sense so far? Let us go a step deeper.

When a seed is planted it grows and carries the original life with it into the fruit where the original seed is reproduced exactly. Then that seed is spread and takes root in others and the process repeats itself. If we plant a doctrine this morning, a spiritual seed into your heart, and it takes root, it will grow and bear the fruit of that doctrine. Then the original doctrine which was the original seed will first bare the fruit of that doctrine and then come forth from you and be planted in others. Here is the critical point. The life in the seed is the spirit from which the doctrine came.

The life in the Word of God is the Holy Spirit. Jesus said “my words are spirit and life”. When you hear the Word of God and it takes root in your heart, then the life in the Word, the Holy Spirit, will lead you to produce godly fruit and that fruit will carry the original seed, which is the Word, and the life of that seed, which is the Holy Spirit to others. Without the Holy Spirit the Word is a dead letter. The life in the Word is the Holy Spirit.

Every doctrine, belief, teaching, dogma idea etc is a seed. Every seed has life. The life in the seed is the spirit from which the seed came. Remember, a word is a though expressed. So every word, every doctrine, originated with a though. That thought originated in a spirit. Any doctrine or teaching or belief that does not line up perfectly with the word of God is not of God. It did not come from the thoughts of God. If it is not of God then it cannot have the life of God in it. If it is not of God then it MUST have another life in it.

God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That commandment was a seed and the Holy Spirit was the life in that seed. The serpent came with a different seed. His seed was of the devil and had the devil’s life in it. His seed was that you will not surely die but be changed to be smart like God. The life in the devil’s seed was the devil. Eve received the seed of God then she received the seed of the serpent. She let the seed of the serpent grow in her and it bore fruit of that seed which was adultery, and then that fruit reproduced the original seed, the doctrine that the fruit was good to eat, which she then planted in Adam.

It all comes full circle. A seed is planted, it grows in the heart, it produces fruit from the life of the seed, and then that very same seed is reproduced in the fruit bearing the original life and is then replanted in another. Weeds grow way faster than wheat. How long does it take for a gossip to travel? How quickly does a denomination move grow? Look at Scientology. Look at Jehovah’s Witnesses. Look at Islam, they have about two billion followers and 99.999999999999% don’t even know they are worshipping the moon.

The devil has two methods of destroying the seed of God. We just heard of the first one, planting tare seeds to choke out the wheat. But he has another sinister plan in the works. He directly attacks the vine of God before the fruit can come. If you hack at the branch and don’t let the fruit come then you will never get the original seed reproduced and carried forth.

Matthew 13:1 The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the seaside. 2 And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. 3 And he spoke many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow; 4 And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: 5 Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: 6 And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. 7 And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: 8 But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.

Notice here that the seed is being spread. The Word of God is being preached and it is being heard. Some fell by the way side and the devil rooted it up before it could spring up. The devil will sit beside you here while you are reading, or in church on Sundays, and try to take away the word out of your ears. Some might walk out of a church service and not have a clue what was spoken. Sound strange? I have witnessed it on many occasions. Next Sunday after church ask people what was preached. You will be astonished at how many cannot tell you. Can you imagine coming out of a movie theater and not being able to tell someone what the movie was about? Try it and see. There will be some there who were by the wayside and the word that was preached will be gone from them at the door.

Then if the Word does take root, Satan will try to kill it before it bears fruit. He doesn’t care if you have the letter in your mind because without the fruit you will not have a living word to give to another. Without the life and the fruit all you will have to give to another is a dead letter that will kill them. You will be a hypocrite and a stumbling block to them. How many of them have you met? The devil will use the cares of this life and persecution to keep the planted seed from growing in you to bring fruit.

Here is the thing. Once the fruit is ripe, it does not matter how much you try to destroy it, the seed remains intact. Once an apple is ripe you can smash it with a baseball bat and all you will do is spread the seeds. The devil knows he has to get to the tree before the fruits come. Remember what we read earlier that once the fruits come, then follows the harvest. Remember Stephen? His fruit was ripe and even while they were stoning him to death, that living seed spread to Saul of Tarsus. That seed took root in Saul and eventually grew to bear fruit in him and spread more seed.

Joel 1:1 The word of the LORD that came to Joel the son of Pethuel. 2Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the land. Hath this been in your days, or even in the days of your fathers? 3 Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation. 4 That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten.

If the devil is successful he will prevent the planted seed from bearing the fruit and reproducing the original word seed. He will send one thing after another against you. He does not want the fruit to bear because he knows once the fruit is ripe that the seed will be spread. The fruit carries and reproduces the original seed with the original life. This too is essential. Without the fruit of the spirit your doctrine will be dead. In order to reproduce a living seed you must FIRST have a living fruit.

We have many who know the Bible almost from cover to cover but they do not know the author and are not filled with the Holy Spirit. They can quote scriptures but that scripture they are quoting to you is a dead letter. Without the Holy Spirit of God, the scripture is a dead letter. Without the spirit of the Lord God in us there will be no fruit of the spirit in our lives and thus no living Word Seed, no matter how much dead letter is in there.

So what are we testifying today? Do we have the fruit to back up our testimony? It is not enough to have the letter of the Bible, we must also have the Spirit to give life that Word. Jesus told the 120 to go to the upper room and wait until they were endued with power from on high. Why did they need to wait? They had sat at the feet of Jesus for 3 ½ years listening to him preach. They had read the scriptures and seen how Jesus fulfilled them all. They witnessed all the miracles. They believed the message of their hour. Why did they need to wait? They did not have the life in them and without that life they carried a dead letter. Once the life, the Holy Spirit, came, then they had a living Word Seed in them bring forth the fruit of the spirit and reproducing a living Word Seed to others.

Romans 7:5 For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. 6 But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

Paul here speaking of the new birth and the receiving of the Holy Spirit, shows us that without the Spirit we bring forth “fruit unto death” even when following the letter of the law. The letter cannot save us, only Jesus Christ can save us. Without Jesus Christ it does not matter how much Bible we know, what church we go to, what degree or education we have, we are still very much lost. Salvation is not of knowledge, salvation is not of learning, salvation is not of wisdom, salvation is not of belonging to an organization, salvation is not of a church, salvation is not of having your name on a book, salvation is not of taking an Alpha Course, SALVATION IS OF THE LORD. And it is in the “newness of Spirit”, Paul informs us, that we are able to bring forth living fruit and living doctrine.

2 Corinthians 3:3Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. 4And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: 5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; 6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter kills, but the spirit giveth life.

It is the life in the seed that determines the fruit. Without life in the seed there is no living fruit. Without life in a baby it is still born. Without the Holy Spirit a Christian is still born. Without the Holy Spirit your fruit will be barren and lifeless. We may smile a lot, we may have that smarmy falsetto voice that they seem to have, we may know all the catch phrases and be able to quote scripture and the prophet like a parrot, we may even have the fake Kentucky accent, but without the Holy Spirit we are still born and our fruit will be dead and barren and rotten and lifeless. We may even live what others would call a perfect, moral, righteous life. The rich ruler did and he was dead on his feet. Without the living seed growing by the life of the Holy Spirit in that seed we will be walking open graves.

That is what is wrong with the Christian world today. That is what is wrong with the message ranks today. As it was in Jesus’ day, so too is it today. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever. Well the devil don’t change either. The church today is the same as the church of yesterday, only a little bit worse. The preachers of today are no different from the preachers of yesterday.

Matthew 23:1Then spoke Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, 2 Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat: 3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. 4 For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. 5 But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, 6And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, 7 And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. 8 But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren. 9 And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven. 10 Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ. 11 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. 12And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. 13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. 14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation. 15Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

You cannot plant any other seed than that which is within you. If you have a denominational seed growing in you then you can only produce another denominational person. If you have a worldly seed in you then you can only produce another worldly person. In order to plant the seed of God in another heart you must first have that seed of God in you, living and bearing fruit. The Pharisees had Pharisee seed and thus could only produce more Pharisees. Presbyterians have Presbyterian seed, Pentecostals have Pentecostal seed, Catholics have catholic seed.

They had the letter, they read from it every Sabbath in the synagogue but they did not have the spirit of Christ in them, and Jesus said that all they were able to produce was “twofold more children of hell”. What do we produce? What seed are we planting? What seed is within us? What fruit are we bearing? What life is in us?

There were two men a long time ago. They were closely related and had business dealings with each other. As time went on they separated from one another, one went to the city to try his hand there at politics and the other stayed in a rural environment and maintained an agricultural business. Both were successful in their business endeavors. They were both religious and righteous men and both believed very strongly in God.

But there was a difference between them. One had a different spirit from the other. He had a different seed growing in him by a different life. They had the same word and the same doctrine, but a different seed. While they would both have been called Christians today, one man had fruit that bore witness to his testimony and the other did not. The one man seemed quite pious and in fact was even visited by two angels. These two angels informed this man, that his beloved city was going to be destroyed and that everyone should flee. So he, a righteous man, caring dearly for his friends and family, ran quickly to his relatives to testify of the things of the Lord. He went to plant a seed but all he had was a dead letter.

Genesis 19:12 And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place: 13 For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it. 14 And Lot went out, and spoke unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law.

He was mocked. He surely had the Word of God. He came speaking the truth of the letter of the word to them. He had what could be in that day be called the Bible and he preached to them out of that word of God. He had no Spirit of God, so there was no life in the seed he was trying to plant. He had no fruit so his testimony was dead. All he could bring to them was the dead letter. That letter killed because those men now were responsible for the truth which they heard and rejected.

The second man’s name was Abraham. Abraham had the fruit of the Spirit and the seed he planted was alive with the life of God.

Everything comes full circle. You start with a seed, you plant that seed and it grows into a tree, the tree although seemingly different from the seed carries the life of the seed to the tips of its branches where it bears fruit that reproduce the original seed with the original life in it.

We plant a word seed, that seed produces a Christian walk and carries the life of the seed, which is the Holy Spirit to bear out in the fruit of the spirit in that person. That fruit reproduces the original Word Seed with the original life of the Holy Spirit and sows that seed to others.

There is a serpent’s seed and there is a seed of God. Both seeds were planted in Eden. Both seeds are alive and well today. Both seeds are producing fruit. Whatever seed is in you will bear its fruit in due season. Whatever seed is in you will be reproduced in the fruit of your life. You can do all sorts of things to a plant but it will not change the fact that the seed that is produced in the fruit is the exact same seed that was planted in the ground in the first place. Beat the apple tree all you want, dress it up, glue orange bark on it, even paint its fruit orange, the fruit will still be apples in the end. The seed in the fruit will be apple seeds and will carry apple life. That is the law of reproduction.

Take a serpent’s seed, educate him, get him all learned up in the scriptures and you will just have another Cain. Take a seed of God, drag him or her through the filth and corruption of the world, lead him into sin and unrighteousness, hook him on drugs or alcohol, and in the end God finds him, God will clean him off and he will bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

Remember what we read in Joel about how the devil was attacking the vine. He used, a locust, and a palmerworm etc and chewed the word of God down to a nub. We saw that prophecy coming to pass throughout the dark ages where the Catholic Church beat down the Christians to the point where it was a capital offense for anyone even to read the Bible. But the life in that seed was not killed. The life in that seed was not changed. The life and the seed remained.

God sent Luther, the first of the reformers and the stalk began to grow again, not looking exactly like the original seed but carrying the life of that seed forth. He brought us the simple message of Justification. “The just shall live by faith”. The stalk grew with the life of the seed. Then God sent forth a man named John Wesley. He added onto Luther’s message of justification with the message of sanctification. It still did not look exactly like the original planted seed but it carried the life of the seed a little further along and brought it a little closer to the seed. The stalk now had leaves and the life in those leaves was the very same Holy Spirit that was in the original seed.

Then it came time for the fruit. A bud formed one day at the end of the tallest, leafiest branch. At a little mission on Azusa Street in California about a hundred years ago, God started to restore the gifts of the Holy Spirit in signs, wonders and miracles. There were healings. There were prophesies. There were tongue and interpretation messages. The fruit was bearing and ripening. The church after nearly 2000 years finally began to resemble the book of Acts again. It was looking a lot more like the original seed now than ever before and many people thought it indeed was the original seed.

But it was not the seed, it was the fruit of wheat. They did not look at the season. They forgot to look at the world’s timeclock. They forget to look to at Israel. Israel was not a nation yet so it was too soon for the seed to come. The shuck merely protects the seed that is within it and bears the life of the original seed forward to the reproduced seed.

It looked like the seed, it carried the life of the seed, but it was not and is not the original seed. At ripening the Seed will pull away from the shuck. Don’t miss this! Millions have missed it and are missing it today. Remember the seed comes at the harvest. Jesus told us that once the seed is ripe the harvest comes. The two look very much alike but only one is a living seed. The gifts are not the seed. The Word is the seed and the gifts are the fruit of the Word. The Pentecostal Revival was the fruit carrying the life to the seed, and the message of the hour is the Original Word Seed Reproduced in our day for it is the entire Word of God revealed and vindicated by God.

The only seed that we can plant that will produce a born again spirit filled Christian is this blessed revealed word of God in its entirety. Add anything to it and you poison the life out of it. Take even one word from it and you bleed the life out of it. Any change or alteration of any kind to this word, this Holy Bible, is a perversion. Perversion is of the devil. This Word of God with the life of the revelation of the Holy Spirit is the only Original Word Seed.

The Bible says we are redeemed. To be redeemed is to be brought back to the original state. We come full circle. The Word comes full circle. The Seed comes full circle. The Bible comes full circle. Man comes full circle. Jesus when questioned always pointed back to the beginning. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. The message of the hour is nothing new; it is a very old message indeed for it is the Original message. It is the original Word of God.

What seed is in us this morning? What seed are we planting in our hearts? What do we listen to, what do we watch, what do we read? Every thought is a seed. Every word we hear is a seed. Search through the garden of your heart and see what seeds are there. What is your fruit? Are you a Lot or an Abraham? The fruit of your life will show you what life is in you. The life that is in you comes from the seed that is in you and it will reproduce itself in you.

What seed is in your heart this morning? Plant the seed of God. Plant the Original Word Seed in your heart, water it, fertilize it, bear the fruits of it and reproduce it so that you can sow that seed to others. What is your fruit? What is my fruit? Remember every seed after its kind and every fruit bears the life of the seed. If you have a Baptist seed you will have Baptist fruit and reproduce more Baptist seed. If you have Pentecostal seed you will bear Pentecostal fruit and reproduce and sow Pentecostal seed to others. If you have a religious seed then you will bear religious fruit and reproduce and sow religious seed. But if you have the Original Word Seed, then and only then will you bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit and reproduce and sow Original Word Seed to others. You must be born again!

This is what it boils down to. Some people might not like to hear it but I have to tell you the truth. I am not trying to offend anyone so don’t take this personal. You don’t have to agree with me, just agree with this Bible. You have to be rapture ready and it is my job to help you get to that condition. To be rapture ready we must know, and understand, and apply this to our lives. The Holy Spirit is only in the Original Word Seed. Nowhere and nothing else will do. Jesus said “my words are spirit and life”. Only his unadulterated revealed word of God for the hour has the life of the Holy Spirit in it.

Every other doctrine, every other tradition, every other dogma, every other religion, every other philosophy, every catechism, every apostles creed, no matter how logical, how sweet, how wonderful it sounds or who spoke it, if it is not the Revealed Word of God, if it is not perfectly scriptural, it has a demonic life in it. That’s a hard word for some but it is the absolute truth.

That is why Jesus warned the Pharisees as he did, telling them that because they were not planting the correct seed, they were producing twofold children of hell. If we plant any other seed than this blessed revealed Word of God, then we are planting a perverted, demonic seed and turning people into twofold children of hell. A demonic seed can only produce demonic fruit. A demonic seed can only produce more demonic seed.

Every seed after HIS kind. Do you see it now? The seed of God is God’s word and it is after God’s kind for God is its father. God is the father of Jesus Christ who is the Word of God. A demonic seed is of the devil and is after the devil’s kind. Jesus said that the devil was the father of all lies. That demonic seed he planted in Eden is still bearing fruit and reproducing itself today. Eat of that fruit and you shall surely die. It is beautiful. It is tasty. It is logical. It is sweet. It makes sense. It is demonic and it will kill you body, mind and soul. It is a perversion of the original seed. You can’t mix it and you can’t hybrid it. That is spiritual evolution and it is of the devil. Every seed after his kind. The Catholic Church hybridized it with paganism and produced a corrupt perverse seed that brings death. They murdered 68,000,000 Christians with it. It is a pattern that is in place today. The devil will take the original word seed and corrupt and pervert it with his ideas, his philosophy, his psychology, his logic and produce a perverted tare seed. Have nothing to do with it. Touch not, taste not, handle not.

Let’s get to the Word. Let’s plant the seed of God in our hearts. Let’s water that seed. Let’s fertilize that seed. Let’s bear the fruit of that seed. Let’s allow the Holy Spirit, the life in that seed, to bear its fruit and reproduce that seed in us to sow to others. Let’s allow the Seed of God to be reproduced in us.

So when you meet someone on the street and they talk with you, remember the spirit in that person is trying to plant a seed in your heart with every word they speak. And remember too that your spirit is doing the same to them. When you watch a movie, hear a song, listen to a conversation, read a book or magazine, the spirit in the author of those words is attempting to plant a seed in your heart with every word. Every word. So be careful of what you expose yourself too. You don’t notice the dandelion seed in your lawn until the flower pops up. You may not notice the seed planted in your heart until you start to see the fruit of it in your life. Pay attention to your fruit. If there is a seed growing in there that should not be there, a weed in your heart, your life will reveal it. Watch your life. And you cannot simply cut the head off of a weed, you have to dig it out from the roots. Search your lives and dig out those weeds. And plant God Seed instead, both in yourself, in your family, and in all those around you.

The message for today is one of encouragement. It is the message of the Lord God Jehovah working in us.

Philippians 2:13For it is God which works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

May the Lord God add his blessing to the reading of his word.

It is a short scripture but there is so much in it. It is God working in you, in me. We are not Christians of our own accord, it is by the grace of God. We could not do this on our own. We did not come here on our own. We cannot understand this word of God on our own. But it is God Himself working in us.

Who here has been delivered? Did you do that or did God deliver you? Who has been healed? Did you do it or did God heal you?

Everything we have is of God. He is the giver of all good gifts. God himself is working in us for two purposes: to will or desire His good pleasure, and to do His good pleasure.

Galatians 4:6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father.

Your very desire for God is not of yourself but is given to you from God. We are fleshly creatures the same as the world. We lived in sin the same as the world. We were conceived in iniquity, born in sin and come into the world speaking lies. Every one of us the same as the world.

Yet there is something different about us. When we heard the word of God we accepted and believed it. When we heard the voice of the Shepard we came and followed him. Why? What makes us different? Are we holier than they are? No. Are we more righteous than they are? No. Are we smarter than they are? No. The difference is that God is working in us. God is working in us!

John 6: 43 Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur not among yourselves. 44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.

Have you come to the Son? We have all come to Jesus if we are Christians? We have come because God drew us. We can only come to Jesus if God draws us. We can only come to Jesus if God is working in us. Jesus Christ is the word of God. Amen? The message is the Revealed Word of God. Amen? So we can only come to the word, to believe the message of the hour if God is working on us. And to believe the message is not simply to parrot the prophet. To believe the message is to have the message, the word of God, the Bible, revealed to you by the Holy Spirit. That is God working in you.

But that does not mean that we can be slack and idle. We have a job too.

Romans 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Prove the perfect will of God. Be not conformed to this world. Who runs the world? The devil. So be not conformed to the devil’s world, but be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. Be transformed into the Word of God. Present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Did you ever ask yourself what this means or what it entails? What are we sacrificing? We are sacrificing our flesh. We are crucifying our fleshly desires, our ungodly lusts, for Christ. To present ourselves as a holy sacrifice unto the Lord we must be holy, and we can only be holy if the Holy Spirit dwells in us. That, once again is God working in us. It is His holiness that makes us holy.

We also have to offer up the sacrifice of praise. Jesus said if we will deny him then he will deny us, but if we will confess him, then he will confess us. Did you ever wonder why it is so hard to open your mouth and praise God sometimes? The hardest thing for people to do is to praise the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, even in church. The devil, and our flesh are working against us. But God is working in us, and if we choose to think God’s thoughts, then we will overcome our flesh and the devil and be able to raise our voices and praise and worship God.

God is working in us but He requires an effort from us to. Remember the wise and the foolish virgins. God was working in both of them, they were all saved but the foolish virgins worked against God, they fought against the working of God in them. Remember we are at war and the battle is in our minds. We can hinder the working of God in us. We have to be transformed into the image of Christ by the renewing of our minds. It is in our minds, our decisions, that we accept and prove the perfect will of God.

And it involves a change in us. What we were is no good. We must be transformed, changed. We must get rid of the old things. That is the circumcision of the heart. Old ideas, old ways, old feelings, old thoughts, old manners, old lives must all perish with the old man.

Colossians 3:7In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them. 8 But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of you mouth. 9 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; 10 and put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.

Put of the old man with his deeds. Our old man, the person we were, must be put off with all of our old deeds. When we are baptized we are burying that old man, with all of its sins and all of its vices in water that we may be born again renewed in Christ Jesus. And we have to put on the new man after the image of Christ. Are we the image of Christ? When the world looks at us do they see Jesus Christ, or do they see the old man? Has the world seen a change in us? Are we allowing God to work in us or are we hindering Him?

Moses fought against the Lord. Caught you off guard with that. He was not intentionally fighting God, but by His Egyptian education, by the learning he received in the flesh, he was acting contrary to what God wanted. God was working in him, but his mind was not in tune with God’s word. So he tried to do what he thought was the will of God but in fact he was working contrary to it. It took another 40 years for Moses to get in to the right condition where God could work in him unhindered.

There was a young man in Israel. He was very zealous for the Lord, a Pharisee and a devout Jew of the tribe of Benjamin. He studied under the best teacher that Israel had to offer. He knew the scriptures, the law and the prophets, better than any man in Israel. His whole life was dedicated to the living God of Israel to the point where there was nothing he would not do for God. But even though this man was a predestinated seed of God, he was hindering the working of God in him, that is until God got hold of him.

Galatians 1:13 For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it.

Paul was a predestinated seed, a chosen vessel of the Lord, an apostle, a prophet and the messenger to the first church age and yet he was hindering the working of God in him. How much more do we? Our thoughts, our ideas, our works, our lives will either hinder God’s working in us or it will complement it. What are our live like? Are we hindering the working of God in us? Attitude says it all. Let’s look at two people who were given the same message. They were both children of God. One hindered the working of God and the other complemented it.

Luke 1:13But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. 14 And thou shalt have joy and gladness; and many shall rejoice at his birth. 15 for he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother’s womb. 16 And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. 17 And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. 18 And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years? 19 And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to show thee these glad tidings. 20 And behold, you shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because you believe not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.

Zacharias was a man of God, and a preacher too. He was not an unbeliever. But because he could not understand Gabriel’s words, he foolishly rejected them. And because he rejected them the angel gave him a little time of trouble. The angel had to make a little adjustment in Zacharias so that he could come to terms with the message and yield to the working of God in him.

Luke 1:38 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

So it is truly our choice. It is your choice right now. Make the right choice. Our attitude will determine how God works in us. We can either accept the Word and yield to the spirit, or we can hinder the working of the Lord by doubting what the word says to us.

Some through the fire and some through the flood, some through the water but all through the blood, some in great sorrow, but God gives a song, in the night season and all the day long. If we are called for eternal life God will have His way with us. If we hinder his working he will still accomplish that which he determines to accomplish, we will just have to suffer a little. He is not punishing us, he is chastising us. Zacharias was not punished, he was chastised. He was given a little spank by God so he would line himself up with God’s will.

It may seem a little rough or scary to think about being chastised of God but the Bible gives us direction.

Hebrews 12:6 For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives. 7 If ye endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chastens not? 8 But if ye be without chastisement, wherefore all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons.

The devil will tell you the opposite. The devil will tell you that God has written you off, that you are being punished and God has left you. That is a lie! That is God dealing with you. That is God working in you. If we do not yield to the working of the Holy Spirit in us willingly of our own accord then God will give us a little spank to wake us up so that we will yield to him. Was Moses being punished when he got sent off into the desert to be a Sheppard for 40 years? No. That was God dealing with him. Was Zacharias being punished with his stroke or whatever it was? No. That was God dealing with him. Was Paul being punished when he was blinded on the road to Damascus? NO. That was God working through and in him. Some through the fire and some through the flood.

But it will come down to our attitude, to how we see ourselves and how we see God.

James 4:6But he gives more grace. Wherefore he said, God resists the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. 7 Submit yourself therefore to God. Resist the devil and he shall flee from you. 8 Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 9 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.

Is it coming together? Am I making sense to everyone? God is working in each and every one reading this blog right now. He is doing it by his word and by the incidents in our lives. He is working to transform us into the image of Jesus Christ. He is molding us like clay. He is the potter. And if the clay will not come into shape, then sometimes the potter has to bust it up and start over. But the potter doesn’t throw away the clay, he starts over from scratch with the same clay. Sometimes we get so out of God’s will that he has to bust us up and start from the bottom up. That is what he did to Moses.

Romans 6: 11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lust thereof. 13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

Yield yourself to God. You are called for it. One way or another God will accomplish in you the things that He has determined for you. You cannot avoid it. Your name was written in the lamb’s book of life before the foundation of the world and God did not do that by mistake. You fate was determined before the universe was created. What was not determined is how you will get there. You will get there, that is for sure, but you can come the easy way or the hard way, but you will surely come.

Zacharias could have taken the easy way but he did not and it cost him 9 months of not being able to talk. He was still saved. He was still the father of God’s greatest prophet. But he had to go through some fire on his journey.

What about us? What about you? Are we going to yield to God? Eventually we will. Why not take the easy way? God will mold you into the image of Jesus Christ. He has promised to do it and one way or another He will do it. It is really up to us as to which path we take. God only spanks us when we are bad. If we have a stubborn spirit God will break that thing. If we are proud God surely will humble us. If we are Laodicean and lukewarm God will surely set us on fire.

Sin. Sin is unbelief. Unbelief is the only sin. Lying, stealing etc. are attributes of sin. We do them because we do not believe in the first place. Unbelief is sin. Let not sin, unbelief, reign in you mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lust thereof. The old man again. Yielding again. You have two spirits talking to you right now. Which are you going to yield too. The Bible tells us to yield to Christ and not to the lusts of our flesh because the lusts of the flesh work unrighteousness. If we yield ourselves to sin we will reap the wages of unrighteousness. If we yield ourselves to the lusts of the flesh or the things of the world we are hindering the working of God in us. God will warn us, and warn us, and speak to us, and preach to us, and finally he will chastise us. He has given us a way to walk and one way or another we will walk with him.

What is our walk? It is our service to the Lord and our service to the world.

Colossians 1:10 That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in knowledge of God;

Our service unto God is our lives. God is working in us, transforming us into the image of His son through his word, and working in us to both desire and to do His will in our lives. If we walk according to the spirit, then we will be pleasing to God, serving God and serving men in a godly fashion.

2 Corinthians 3:2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: 3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to bed the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in table of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.

We are written epistles. We are the word of God in flesh today. We are supposed to be. The Bible says that we are supposed to be. Are we? Are people surprised when you tell them you are a Christian? Is it because your life does not match your testimony? Are we pleasing to the Lord?

We have the message of the hour. We have been sent a prophet of God, vindicated by signs, wonders and miracles, who brought out the hidden mysteries of the Bible, restored the lost doctrine from the Bible, and restored the faith of the children to that of the original Pentecostal fathers. We have, for the first time in history, the first time since time began, the whole Bible revealed. Every single word written in this book is now open to us. We have the greatest light that has ever shone on earth today. We have more light than Noah, more than Moses, more than Paul, for the mysteries were sealed up unto this hour.

We have the greatest truth the world has ever known. We have the pillar of fire, not just in a picture on our mantels, but right here amongst us working the same miracles that he has always worked. God is working in us, in our hearts, in our souls, changing us, teaching us, transforming us into his image. Our job is to live that life, to yield to the Holy Spirit and to resist the devil. Our job is to be the Bible to others, to show Jesus Christ in our lives. Our job is to crucify our old man with the desires thereof and to live a new life in Christ Jesus.

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot mix God with the world.

Matthew 9:16 No man puts a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment and the rent is made worse. 17 Neither do men put new wine into old bottle: else the bottles break, and the wine runs out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.

They did not have glass bottles in those days, they had wine skins. And new wine is still fermenting. It is full of life and bubbling up with life. You put new wine in an old dried up wine skin and the pressure from the bubbles will burst that old skin.

We cannot take a patch of God’s righteousness and patch the holes in the filthy rags of our righteousness. We must do as Elisha and cast off our robes, cast off our self-righteousness and wrap ourselves in the robes of God’s righteousness. We must be justified and sanctified before we can ever be filled with the Holy Spirit and there is no way to put the Holy Spirit into an old dead carnal denominational religion.

You try putting the Holy Spirit into a dead formal denomination and it will bubble up with life and bust its way out. The upper room could not contain the 120 once the Holy Spirit indwelled them and neither will a denomination contain a Christian once God fills them today. The only difference today between a Pentecostal and a catholic is the street address. We must be born again of water and of spirit, and that new birth will set us free from all traditions and dogmas and creeds.

And if we cannot put the Holy Spirit into a religion, how much less can we put it into the world. You cannot patch up an unholy worldly heart with a Holy Spirit. It won’t stick. It is full of power and it will rend the worldly heart in two. You cannot put the Holy Spirit into an old dried up heart. It will bubble up and bust you wide open.

We need a new heart and a new spirit, then God will give us the Holy Spirit. We have to cleanse ourselves, or rather let the Lord God cleanse us, from the things of the world and the things of the flesh and the things of religion. We have to yield to the working of God in us. We have to stop resisting him. He will have his way in the end.

Look at Jonah the prophet. He steadfastly resisted the will of God. God told him to go one way and he went the other, and God sent him a spanking in the form of a storm and a big fish. If Jonah had not resisted the working of God in him then he would have foregone that whole nightmare. And look at Nineveh. When the word of the Lord came to them they accepted it immediately and suffered nothing. They were on the verge of being condemned and destroyed off the face of the earth but when the heard the message of the hour they immediately repented and received it and yielded themselves to it.

Sodom was sent a similar warning but they scoffed at the message. They refused to yield to the word of God and were destroyed of fire.

We hear the message of our hour. This generation is on the verge of destruction by fire. This generation will be like Sodom but worse for Jesus said if Sodom had seen the signs and wonders they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes and be standing today. This generation will not yield to the word of God, to the message of the hour and will most certainly be cleansed by fire.

But God is working in us. God is giving us his word. His spirit is molding us, sculpting us, transforming us into his image. All He requires of us is to yield to him and to resist the devil. All he requires of us is to choose. He is doing the work.

Ephesians 2:10For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

We are His workmanship. It is God that is working in us. It is God that is changing us. It is God that forgave our sins. It is God that delivered us from bondage. It is God that healed our diseases. It is God that is transforming us and it is God that ordained us to walk in his word before the foundation of the World. And let us leave you with this last word. A word upon which you can meditate for the rest of you time on earth. A promise of God that will not pass away, will not fail and will not change.

Philippians 1:6 Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

Paul says to be confident. Be confident in his promise. Be confident in his workmanship. Has he begun a work in you? He won’t stop until he comes back for you. Be confident in that fact. Yield yourself to him, he is working in you right now. He will be working in you tomorrow. He will be working a good work in you till the rapture comes to take you home. Be confident. It isn’t us working. It is God working in us. We cannot fail for it is not us doing the work it is God himself. God is doing it and he never fails. Be confident in God.

Rejoice oh Christian and shout for God is working a good work in you. The most holy Lord God Jehovah, creator of heaven and earth, is perfecting you with his word. Yield to God and be quick to answer him. Receive of his word and of his spirit. Receive his word, believe his word and obey his word. Cry out to him day and night. Praise his name for it is God himself that is working in you. And He that is in you is greater than he that is in the world. What victory we have in Jesus.